There is nothing quite like the sensation upon encountering a roomful of freely expressive abstract paintings. Especially true if the gallery is redolent with the incense of freshly minted ones as is the case here with the exhibition, Dinner With Sue, of new work by the estimable Sam Mattax at Fredericks & Freiser.
With a palette heavy with the spirit of James Ensor, Mattax constructs tangled compositions that recall of Per Kirkeby with the overlaying piquancy of Georges Roualt. Then there is the elan that reminds one of the lushness of John Walker’s 1970s cutbait landscapes, that were subsumed into witchy bayous in subsequent series. Mattax, for his part, rather than the realms of spiritual bugaboo turns his attention to the carnivalesque, literally; a better fit with his midwestern roots (he was born in Springfield, Missouri).
Dinner with Sue, 2025, heavy with skeins that fuse into globular forms harking to jellyfish (one can only that the titular dinner was not comprised of the coelenterate) in rages of Cerulean and various Cadmiums, in a fashion akin to early-to-mid-career Terry Winters. Overlays of oil stick speak of the present art world moment as well as cleave to Jean-Michel Basquiat who brought its usage to prominence. *
Mattax’s thickets shares a lane with José Parlá and Zeng Fanzhi, both of whom bear the appearances of having plumbed the swift finesse of late DeKooning (as well as pulling from graffiti), as did Sue Williams during her foray into less resolved imagistic-driven between her breakthrough agitprop cartoon period and her current mature resolutions. Whereas, Mattax holds fast to a devotional leaning to mid-twentieth century abstraction; represented on both sides of the Atlantic in the guises of Ab Ex and Art Informel, alternatively.
Now we’re both 29, 2025, has Mattax setting his tones against an airer, less clotted, taupe ground. The breathing space provides an environment that sets one attention to ping-pong amongst the islands of coalescence.
Mattax’s wizardry gains additional resonance in a pair of horizontal canvases, In the weeds with frog and toad and Winters pan and a roaring fork, both 2025, that have an air of 1950s illustration about them. The subjects evoke the swampy outer edges of fairgrounds.
The tent and penant shapes sketched across the surfaces throughout, drifting in and out of focus, could easily be regarded as a hook. But, with Mattax’s controlled slapdash, they never rise to nostalgic kitsch; I am thinking, in contrast, of the work of Childe Hassam that cleaves in just such a direction.
If by chance, please pull on down, 2025, expounds with a chromatically darker vertical picture playing with a blend of aspects from works previously mentioned. Tagged with a title, as throughout, of conundrums suggestive of beat poetry suitable to the visual teasing tangle that ponders deeper meaning beyond the punch it delivers.
* Richard Serra would actually bers credit for the mediums usage–utilizizing it as early are the late 70s–in a deployment that highlighted its plastic near-sculptural qualities, rather than as a painterly tool.