Ruth Root’s irrepressible abstract compositions have variously featured real cigarettes stuck to the paint, squinty eyes peeking out from the composition and ergonomic shapes filled with patchworks of color. Yet her canvases have never seemed silly.
Each piece consists of a painted Plexiglas panel partially wrapped in bright textiles decorated with computer-generated patterns of the artist’s design. The fabrics are tautly threaded through slots cut into the plastic so that cloth and pigment seem to merge like the work of the French group Support/Surfaces on overload.
In one example recalling Mount Fuji, a green-striped triangle is topped with purple and yellow fabric. In another, a chicken drumstick-like shape juts from the top of a trapezoid banded in salmon and gray.
However terrific these objects are individually, together they seem a bit formulaic. More misbehaving from a few of them would have made the proceedings seem more like a show and less like a showroom.—Anne Doran