"Moira Dryer Project"

Dryer, a Canadian-born artist who died in 1992 at age 34, was something of an anomaly in the 1980s New York art world. Eschewing both Pictures Generation aesthetics and Neo-Expressionism, she was an abstract painter who softened geometric motifs or patterns within painterly washes of casein or acrylic paint on wooden panels. Luminous color and diaphanous surface effects were hallmarks of her approach, and it was this focus on sublimity that made her efforts seem a bit out of step with the rather raucous tone of ’80s art, though it is precisely this quality that makes her work ripe for revival.