Bernhardt, Frost, Rivers, Schumann, Williams includes paintings by Katherine Bernhardt, Alistair Frost, R.B. Kitaj, Larry Rivers, Max Schumann and Michael Williams, and explores the enduring convergence of pop-culture imagery, art historical conventions, and pure painterly concerns.

Anchored by a pair of late-period R.B. Kitaj paintings and three 1960s Larry Rivers works, the tone is set for consistent slippage between active surface and illusionary space, representation and freeform facture. Kitaj’s singular use of color, and varied mark-making, depict intensely personal scenes, and stand in contrast to Rivers’ subjects drawn from the convergence of commonly available products, advertising and art history, but nicely bookend the tendencies of the more recent works.

The use of text, numbers and symbols recurrent in the paintings gathered here often calls attention to the picture plane and its use as a site for the direct communication of language. Simultaneously however, overall pigment application in streaks, whorls, blots, obliterations and pentimenti privileges the loose and improvisational codes of the painterly. The resonance of these works resides in the tension and dynamism created between these polarities.