The title of this show—Couples Squared—references an algebraic equation most teenagers learn in high school. But a bit of Medieval alchemical magic is involved in the artworks these men and women create. From raw ideas, thoughts, notations, scribbles, and such, they execute compelling, exhilarating paintings, sculpture, and photographs. They challenge our thoughts and tug at our heartstrings. Once seen, we often become better people. If we’re lucky, our lives might change.
In the not so distant past, i.e. during the nineteen forties and fifties when the New York School was emergent, painters like Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler or James Brooks and Charlotte Park were card-caring abstractionists. These days, subjects and themes are more varied.
On the walls of this exhibition, you’ll find nonrepresentational works hanging alongside portraits, figures, landscapes and seascapes. They have been executed in vivid colors, lively patterns, assertive brushstrokes, subdued passages, and other sorts of ways. Unlike fathers and mothers seen in tandem with sons and daughters, you can’t predict what these mates might do. Variations abound. There’s no accounting for the mysteries of life.