Exhibition

School of Visual Arts presents “Surface Life,” an exhibition of paintings by two MFA Fine Arts students that expand on 20th-century expressionist abstraction. Curated by Richard Brooks, assistant director of SVA Galleries, “Surface Life” is on view March 21 through April 12 at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, New York City. Admission is free.

Sarah Dineen’s ongoing series of abstract paintings “Certain Dark Things” is derived from Pablo Neruda's Love Sonnet 17: "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul." Accordingly, Dineen employs impasto and a dark, reductive palette to reveal forms embedded in fields of black and gray. Ribcage-like structures cradle glowing organic shapes that feel familiar but are ultimately unidentifiable, inviting viewers to discover unexpected associations.

A pronounced organic sensibility permeates Lulu Zhang’s paintings. Zhang uses free association to combine mixed media, color and form to create casual yet highly resolved abstractions. Employing both painstaking drawing and expressive gestural marks on large scale paper, Zhang creates densely clustered compositions populated with biomorphic forms coexisting in a delicate balance.