Abstraction as Architecture

Free from cloying commentary or historical delusions, abstract painting in Los Angeles celebrates the beauty of structure.

BARBARA KERWIN

Barbara Kerwin uses a grid structure as her point of departure, cracking that rigidity with a symphony of [oil in high melt wax]-coated, individually-painted surfaces. Something like a visual counterpart to the music, say, of Miles Davis—free-form improvisation over delineated time sequences and melodic, structured choruses-Kerwin's humanizing of the gridded architecture of a painting is not a new strategy; but the beauty she achieves trumps clever innovation.