The Brooklyn Rail

Dana James creates harmony out of contrasts. In mixed media, abstract paintings, she varies her mark-making, ranging from luminous, cloud-like layers to sparse dashes of distinct, bold brushstrokes. She combines materials, sometimes adding paper and metallic foil, and using oil, acrylic, encaustic, pencil, pastel, and pigment. She often collages her own work, cutting and combining canvases, and embraces the physical qualities of her materials, leaving visible fibers, brushstrokes, and delineations between panels and mediums, as if mapping out her creative process for the viewer to parse. In her latest solo exhibition, Pearls & Potions at Hollis Taggart, she pushes her own practice, incorporating bolder juxtapositions, crescent motifs, and shaped canvases to captivate and intrigue the viewer.

Dancing in Pantone (all 2023) is one of the bolder works in the show. A rectangular vignette of luminous colors dominates more than half the composition. Washy pinks and purples comprise this window-like section, to which the artist has added subtly curved rays of vibrant hues, including rich swathes of red, a color she seems to be embracing with confidence. Along the top and right of the rectangle is rough, raw canvas dotted with smudges of paint reminiscent of a studio floor. Two pale rays streak across the rugged surface. Sections of the work seem to have been stripped away to reveal layers of painted canvas below. The contrasting elements within the work draw the eye closer to the surface as the viewer seeks order. However, a closer look offers little clarity, as additional layers of canvas and paint become apparent and further complicate the piece.

Varying degrees of visual contrast are common in James’s practice, as are the multiple layers. She often cuts and rearranges her canvases, combining portions of one with another. Sometimes this is subtle, as in Dancing in Pantone, and sometimes the delineation between one canvas and another is more apparent, such as All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go and the modular Astronomical Dawn (At the Drive-In). In the former, two rectangular compositions of different sizes form a singular work. In the latter, James has combined curved and rectangular canvases, seemingly painting each as separate entities that she has united in an overall irregular shape. A comparison of these demonstrates James’s range. All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go is heavily textured in its layers of canvases, some of which reveal folds and creases as James embraces the thickness of the supports. The edges of each layer are visible, making clear the artist deliberately placed one on top of another, recalling Robert Rauschenberg’s textural mixed media surfaces. All of this is contained in the left side of the work, which James has paired with a relatively restrained panel that resembles a pink sunset. A patch of black paint juxtaposes this luminous, meditative moment. James has united the two mismatched sides with a single, prominent brushstroke of yellow paint.

By contrast, Astronomical Dawn (At the Drive-In) is relatively smooth with pale pinks, blues, and purples combining to form cloud-like atmospheres or puffs of sugary cotton candy. A few dashes of yellow punctuate the central square. The use of curved panels is new to James’s practice, as are the distinct crescent shapes that appear often in this body of work. Subtle curves seen in Dancing in Pantone become bold rays that create a vibrant yellow triangle in The Golden Artifact. Additional arches and curves are visible in this work with white canvas seemingly sewed on top of the composition like patches. Reminiscent of an abstract sunny day, the work is one of many that bears similarities with Richard Diebenkorn’s geometric, seaside landscapes.

Indeed, whether or not they’re intentional, art historical references pop up throughout James’s work. Comparisons can be made with Helen Frankenthaler in the artists’ similar color palettes, though their application of paint and treatment of surfaces diverge. My visit to James’s show came after spending several hours touring Judy Chicago: Herstory at the New Museum. Included in the latter is a selection of work from over eighty artists, writers, and thinkers that contextualizes Chicago’s career, an “exhibition-within-an-exhibition” as the museum calls it. Hilma af Klint’s The Dove no. 2, from Group IX/UW (1915) features prominently in this grouping. With peachy pink hues and luminous purple, it’s hard not to make a comparison with James’s Queen of Hearts, in which two bulbous curves squeeze their way into the right panel, closing in on a patch of amber reminiscent of the red seen in af Klint’s work. The boundaries of af Klint’s circle kiss the edges of the canvas, careful symmetry disrupted in James’s painting as if the circle has broken apart and rotated, landing as fleshy, overlapping curves. Perhaps the New Museum should consider a contemporary addition to their “exhibition-within-an-exhibition”.

James’s crescent shapes also recall Cy Twombly’s boats, seen best bobbing along multiple horizons in Yesterday’s Light. Though Twombly’s oars are absent in James’s composition, the repeated motif and sense of motion bring the late artist’s work to mind. Interpreted literally, the crescent can be viewed as a moon, perhaps a nod to Sailor Moon and the female warriors James cites among her inspirations. Depicted prominently in Angel Food, a pink moon is propped up on what appears to be foil or paper and sits atop a rectangular patch of raw canvas with rough, visible edges that add a sculptural quality to the work. The shape and thick edges recall a pillowcase, as if an abstract representation of a glimpse of the moon at night.

While an art historian might revel in making connections that may or may not exist, James’s work is visually engaging and full of energy with the ability to captivate regardless of the viewers’ interests. Perhaps this is the most exciting aspect of her practice: it consistently intrigues. Her compositions are simultaneously light, airy, and crisp while also heavy, frenetic, and rough. She embraces and heightens her materials, drawing attention to the rawness of canvas, the fibers that unite to form an edge. There are contrasts and juxtapositions, as well as harmony and balance. James leaves viewers free to parse what they wish or simply get lost in the work.