An already widely exhibited 2010 Columbia grad, the archly named N. Dash makes her solo debut with an assured set of dun-colored wall-mounted works punctuated by a trio of small black-and-white photographs. Repositioning painterly support materials such as unprimed and unstretched linen and jute as the components of a kind of almost-sculpture, Dash slathers layers of adobe to construct panels that could double as walls.
Allowing simple contrasts of structure and surface to take the place of applied color and imagery, she folds, crumples, wraps and drapes her fabric, juxtaposing taut with slack, the planned with the seemingly accidental. In Groundings (3), for example, a folded strip of raw linen plugs the vertical gap between two earthy rectangles.
Of course, there are plenty of precedents for this sort of thing. From Antoni Tàpies’s incorporation of mud and rags into paintings to Gedi Sibony’s way with architectural raw materials, numerous artists have employed painting’s basic physical form as a template for more overtly object-oriented projects. The photos, which depict small clumps of cotton fiber, invest these throwaway doodads with sculptural heft, using the medium to hint at hidden processes and introduce an effective confusion of scale and status. Although Dash should be wary of the preciousness that creeps all too easily into work of this stripe, her blend of unrefined organic ingredients and minimalist form is, like a bowl of good granola, balanced and satisfying.—Michael Wilson