Andrea Sulzer, “constellations in the grass,” 50” x 44.5,” acrylic and vinyl paint on canvas, 2024. Photo by Luc Demers

When can context and narrative matter in abstraction, a genre that is essentially nonobjective? Or even in semi-abstraction, where we might have recognition of some elements as familiar, but others seem more ambiguous?

For those interested in this question, two shows offer intriguing perspectives on this contemplation: “Andrea Sulzer: see through simple” at Sarah Bouchard Gallery in Woolwich (through June 23) and “Strauss Bourque-LaFrance: ALIBIS” at Dunes in Portland (end date not set, though probably through July).

Of course, even if this sort of reflection bores you to distraction, both shows are still worth a visit precisely because their apparent nonobjectivity also offers wider latitude for interpretation and is more interested in evoking a visceral and emotional response than telling a story or reproducing a visual reality the way representational art does.

HOLOGRAPH AND HOMAGE

When I first circumambulated Bouchard’s gallery in the treetops, there was one painting I kept circling back to: “constellations in the grass.” I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something very different about this work, which possessed a quality of suspension between worlds.

Andrea Sulzer, “April delirium,” 32.5” x 24.5” (framed). Acrylic and vinyl paint on cotton, 2023. Photo by Luc Demers

Titles can sometimes offer a way into abstract works (though they can also obscure entry), and some titles here appear logically descriptive. It should be noted that Woolwich-based Sulzer’s paintings are not all completely abstract, as many contain recognizable forms. For instance, “April delirium” feels apt for what is obviously, albeit abstractly, a picture of a lush garden, and “Witness tree” succinctly describes, at least on the surface, the central pine tree shape in the painting. Even the verdant green of “constellations” suggests an aerial view of grass pocked with what could be read variously as floral forms, paths traced by animals or footfalls, or punctures in the greenery that reveal other worlds beyond it.

Other titles are more enigmatic. Where, for instance, are the lovers of “lovers’ return,” a painting that initially resembles clouds floating on the surface of a more freeform work featuring stripes and sketch-like hand studies? Similarly missing was the amorous couple referred to in a painting titled “young lovers on the beach.”

One can observe easily enough that most works are about viewing layers through other layers – of paint (in the physical sense), but, in a more abstract context, multiple layers of meaning, dimensions of reality and/or memory. In the foreground of the exhibition’s title painting, for instance, hangs what looks like a swatch of tattered cloth punctured by various holes, giving it a lacelike view onto other layers underneath it. Ditto with “constellations,” in which diaphanous veils of color billow behind, between and in front of the patches of grass, or in “bluet,” in which we can perceive embracing figures behind foreground strips that partially obscure them.

All the paintings except “constellation” were made at an artist residency at Hollins University in Virginia, where Sulzer applied paint to the back of the canvases and let them soak through, then built up layers of color and form on the surface on top of them. Knowing this establishes a sense of fluidity that suggests porousness between what is apparent and what is partially or wholly concealed, what is surface and what is background, and what is interior and what is exterior. They are, in this way, essentially palimpsests that record both a present and the historical past that preceded it. We can almost read what came first, then next, as few of the layers are completely opaque.

Andrea Sulzer, “lovers’ return,” 64.5” x 44.5,” acrylic and vinyl paint on canvas, 2023. Photo by Luc Demers

This is all technical and, should we stop there, pretty nonobjective. However, what if we understood that the clouds of “lovers’ return” are actually white silhouettes derived from the figures of Adam and Even in “Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” a famous fresco by early Renaissance master Masaccio? This is, in fact, the genesis of this shape, which we can see repeated in other works, most notably the sublimely tender “deeper than the sea” and “small fires (1).”

We then might notice that two of the four levels of cloud shapes in “lovers’ return” face one direction and two the other, implying both expulsion from and return to paradise. Other forms are more personal than art historical, such as the yellow in “constellations,” which references a small sculpture Sulzer once made, or the yellow bush in “of course,” which depicts a native flora of Scotland, the homeland of Sulzer’s partner, a poet.

But once we also become aware that “constellations” was painted over the last couple of months following the death of Sulzer’s partner, all the works take on a different dimension. They were all named, for instance, after lines from his poems. Sulzer’s artists’ statement for the exhibition that followed the Hollins University residency explains her “desire to build a history with material, form and ideas, alongside a determination to maintain an openness and freedom within this search … It’s a constant pull between building a foundation and dismantling it, always trying to get closer to the underlying rhythm and motivation for making things.”

Andrea Sulzer, “witness tree,” 32.5” x 24.5” (framed), acrylic and vinyl paint on cotton, 2023. Photo by Luc Demers

That “underlying rhythm and motivation” suddenly becomes apparent in many of the paintings as homage to her relationship, especially in those like “deeper than the sea” and “bluet,” or in “all your colors” (two paintings, numbered 50 and 55, that are abstract articulations not only of Sulzer’s partner’s multifaceted personality, but her palette). Other motivations might include homages to certain memories, such as the “young lovers on the beach” mentioned earlier, which comes from an old photograph of a woman at the shore wearing a flamboyantly patterned dress (the blue and green portion dominating the painting and obscuring the lovers behind it).

Finally, I understood that “constellations,” the work I kept returning to, was different because it had to do with and awareness and experience of loss and, more specifically, with that particular sense of surrealness one feels in its wake. Having recently gone through a great loss myself, I read the billowing veils that come in and out of foreground and the shapes that hovered amid them as that feeling of floating between recognition of loss and the bewilderment of accepting it as truth. There is an unmooring that comes with the death of a loved one, where our ground can feel literally gone and we are suspended between what was and what is, and what is just doesn’t seem quite real. I also began to read the many halo-like borders of paintings like “April delirium,” “bluet” and “witness tree” as surprisingly accurate depictions of the way phenomena manifests out of some mysterious source and recedes into it again, a kind of ephemerality that underlies everything – flower blossoms, emotions, love affairs, ideas and concepts …even existence itself.

SUBJECT IN RETROSPECT

In Sulzer’s paintings, content and narrative revealed more profundity and enhanced my appreciation for the work. Something different happened with “ALIBIS.” The exhibition description for Bourque-LaFrance’s show talks about the way he layers “visual motifs from the city and nature, signage and foliage, paying attention to strange details of visual curiosities, and collating influences from abstract painting, design and domestic objects.”

Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, “Ping-Pong-Pine,” 2024, acrylic, flashe, graphite, 11 by 14 inches Courtesy of Dunes

A few paintings have a narrative or subject that seem clear, even when the works themselves are essentially conglomerations of abstract lines and geometric motifs. In “The Pearl in the Moon” we can discern a moon over an actual cityscape and a hazy white overlay that might suggest smog or fog. The prompt in the title “Ping-Pong-Pine” impels us to associate thin bifurcated lines with pine needles and spherical shapes with pingpong balls. The dominant shape in “Octo-Oyster Sketch” cartoonishly resembles an octopus, while the blue peaks and troughs at the bottom suggest waves.

Other titles can be puzzling or humorous. “Sad Sonnet”? What might that imply about the meandering blue and gray lines and collaged blue, black and red elements applied to the surface? Or “Casual Casualties.” Does it refer to the black shapes scattered randomly liked crime victims around an otherwise brilliantly painted canvas? What are the graffiti-like Day-Glo orange lines above the horizon line and how do they relate to the more ordered yellow and white stripes below it?

Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, “Casual Casualties,” 2024, acrylic, flash, graphite, canvas collage, 30 by 33.5 inches Courtesy of Dunes

So, I asked and got this response from Bourque-LaFrance: “I try to tease out the mood or essence I feel in the painting through the titles. Essence because they are never fully depictive or literal … also as a way to bring humor, more information or to try and weave something real into the abstraction. Often (it’s) me trying to make sense of what I have done.”

The retrospective nature of this way of titling makes total sense. But it also renders actual subject or narrative irrelevant because titling happened after the fact of painting and seeks to decipher for himself the marks and forms he made without specific intention. This immediately elicited in me a sense of buoyancy and freedom. Buoyancy because of the lightheartedness behind titles like “Octo-Oyster Sketch” or the multiple spherical forms of “Orphan Eclipses” (which look, comically, like many eclipses sitting around in a kind of limbo or event horizon of stellar occurrences just waiting to happen). Freedom because the titles are ultimately not terribly pertinent. This liberates us to engage in our own extended riffs of possible meanings and associations and to delight in the colors and forms, which seem to bounce and tumble and bump in a spontaneous sort of cacophony.

Their non-specificity may also refer obliquely to the Poland Spring-born Bourque-LaForce’s queerness in that it exudes a certain non-heteronormative irreverence and the innate absurdity of absolutes in a subjective reality. His paintings are hybridized like all our identities are hybridized. So, it is unimportant to identify a specific painterly reference or content, an exercise that attempts to fix in place something that is forever morphing and evolving. This practice merely capitulates to the type of confining strictures society likes to place on spirits that are irrevocably free of such categorization and codification.

But, ultimately, does this even matter? To me, Bourque-LaFrance’s paintings are best enjoyed without defined context or content, except to perhaps to incorporate the title prompts as a form of play. “ALIBIS” is a complete pleasure that exudes brightness and the very best sort of eccentricity.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com