The Brooklyn Rail

In the summer of 2022, a number of abstract artists gathered in Taos, New Mexico to connect and share what they were working on with other artists. Out of this first gathering—motivated by the isolating forces of the pandemic—sprung the Taos Abstract Artist Collective. The collective initially started with an Instagram account to give visibility to what artists were working on in their studios. It was quickly flooded with responses from all over northern New Mexico, and soon thereafter, the Taos Center for the Arts offered them space to organize a show at the Stables Gallery, which has a long history of hosting abstract and non-representational artists, many of whom left the big cities in waves to come to New Mexico.

This month, the Taos Abstract Artist Collective is holding their second group exhibition of works from artists across northern New Mexico, and it is no less monumental than their first. In total, 147 artists are represented across two shows, one this fall and another in the spring of 2024, and are intentionally focused on building a thriving community. For many of these artists, this show is the first time that they’ve shown their work in years, or shown their work at all, or even talked to other artists about their work, and it was a real joy to see their work alongside well-established artists who’ve been acknowledged for decades.

Complementing the group show, Aleya Hoerlein is having her first solo exhibition in the adjoining gallery. Aleya is one of the founding members of the Taos Abstract Artist Collective, but stepped away in the last year to focus on her paintings, which use dynamic symmetry to reference the body’s relationship to the land and light, and continue many of the ideas started by the Transcendental Painting Group in Taos during the late 1930s.

The overwhelming sentiment from the artists at the opening was that they had forgotten what a rich and rewarding experience coming together, in-person, and talking with other artists can be. For many of them, the pandemic was a huge isolating force, and in that isolation digital platforms replaced the way we form social connections and discover new ideas, art, and music. The events of the last three years have drastically changed the social landscape everywhere, including for those across northern New Mexico.

The artist Ron Davis and his wife Barbara Davis, who have been living and working in Taos for a number of years, were at the opening and were greatly refreshed by the turnout of new artists and young people in the area. They optimistically remarked that the event felt like a return to normal, or the way it should be. Ron traded one of his paintings for the artist Frederick Smith’s large yellow shaped painting Gold Bars (2023) that was included in the show.

Many of the works in the shows captured an intimacy that is all too familiar from recent years—reconciling with loss, comparisons of the past, loneliness, the passing of time—and managed to do it while risking to make something beautiful.

As the autumn sun was setting and people were ecstatically exchanging greetings both indoors and outside, it was a strong reminder that now more than ever, coming together, with art as our vehicle, is truly a radical act for change.