Scott Olson makes abstract paintings with oil and gouache on canvas. He will present a collection of small-scale works in the upstairs gallery for his first exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann. Olson’s paint application varies from lightly dabbed to hard-edged taped, but is never heavily impastoed giving his pieces a kind of dry thinness that privileges two dimensional design over modeling. This is not an artist wallowing in paint—Olson is thoughtfully restrained in his investigations.

Confident marks coexist with tentative washes and create a tension of exuberance tempered by knowing. Grids give way to suggestions of space and imagined landscape only to be obliterated by a circular swirl of the brush or a swath of raw linen that snaps the illusion. In one piece, echoes of Kandinsky’s repeating colored bands overlay a contradictory pale and glazy two-toned wash in a show of versatility that indicates an artist well versed in the many generations and tentacles of abstract painting.

Olson arrived at his current mode of art production via a sustained period of time when he was primarily engaged in new-media exploration. He collected raw sound and shaped those into atmospheric compositions and worked in modes of abstract film and video making. Olson re-applies the improvisational and lyrical poetics of his previous experiences to these experiments with old-fashioned easel paintings.