The Canvas Can Do Miracles

The Canvas Can Do Miracles presents an intergenerational group of artists who share a commitment to abstraction unbound by formalism and embody an artistic ethos rooted in alchemy, process, and resistance. The exhibition foregrounds their diverse painterly strategies, which draw on varied touchstones ranging from the natural world, Indigenous symbologies, and underground ecosystems. For these artists, the canvas is both a material and a coded space for networked communication, transformation, and metaphysical inquiry.
Ragna Bley’s (b. 1986, Uppsala, Sweden; lives and works in Oslo, Norway) sensuous, mesmerizing canvases and preparatory drawings evoking atmosphere, geological substrates, and water emanate from her deeply physical and intuitive process in the studio. Beyond the works exhibited in the gallery, Bley has created a new, large-scale, painting installation that will respond to the environment at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria.
Nathan Carter (b. 1970, Dallas, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY), channels a woman named Mars, a mysterious femme fatale, to trace the contours of gender identification in search of alternative pathways. His mobiles, sculptures, and drawings take inspiration from modernism’s visual rhetoric, botanical forms, the diagrammatic worlds of Richard Scarry, and queer punk histories.
Patrick Dean Hubbell’s (b. 1986, Diné; lives and works on the Navajo Nation) draped, folded, defaced, and deconstructed unstretched canvases and mass-produced textiles ground his unique painterly language. He translates Indigenous stories, traditions, language, and art rooted in his Diné identity into abstract marks and geometric patterning that can read as pure form or markers of cultural significance.
Suzanne Jackson’s (b. 1944, St. Louis, MO; lives and works in Savannah, GA and St. Remy, NY) six-decade painting practice is informed by her background in theater, poetry, dance, bookmaking, costume design, and printmaking. In her suspended, pure acrylic paintings, which have been termed “environmental abstractions,” Jackson incorporates materials from daily life into constellations that enfold storytelling and metaphor, and that act as a physical record of Jackson’s travels and engagement with her studio.
Hayal Pozanti’s (b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey; lives and works in Manchester, VT) pulsing landscapes and swirling biomorphic shapes articulate an engagement with the organic that informs her paintings’ and sculptures’ stunning symbioses of form, emotion, and sensuality. Her emphasis on the biological world also constitutes a defiant rebuke of a future dictated by a disembodied artificial intelligence.
The exhibition is curated by Alex Klein, Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with assistance from Rachel Eboh, Curatorial Assistant.