Vital Presence
Fran O'Neill, Drew Lowenstein, Fran Shalom
September 2 - December 6, 2020
Despite obvious and overt contrasts in mark making, compositional organization and speed of retinal impact, these three artists have in common the lively presence of a sense of self, of humor, of the human predicament, of environment, of society. Fran O'Neill fills the canvas with gigantic, pulsating, serpentine forms that push up against themselves in a frenzy of presentness: effulgent rivers of energy that burst forward while intimating spatial depth. Drew Lowenstein generates socially complex intersections of mark, stain, calligraph, smear that are simultaneously microscopic and oceanic, anarchic and striving towards a hidden order. In contrast to the high jinks of O'Neill and Lowenstein, Fran Shalom makes slowly and slyly humorous metaphysical paintings of disarming, quiet-seeming intensity that punch above their deceptive initial weight. Despite the abstractness of her forms, she imbues these quirky images with a feeling of being subjected to the vicissitudes of life. All three artists, with their particularities of speed, size, iconography and scale, exude vitality and presence.
David Cohen, September 2020
Interview with Drew Lowenstein, Fran O'Neill, Fran Shalom