Organized by guest curator Dore Ashton as part of the New Museum’s On View program, this exhibition presented a selection of paintings and wash drawings by Pierre Tal-Coat.  The process of painting, for Tal-Coat, was a way to discover and celebrate nature in a manner that acknowledged twentieth-century apperceptions. There was a tenderness of hue in his paintings, which was mitigated by a faintly disquieting motility, or eruption, engendered by the modeled surfaces.

In his wash drawings, Tal-Coat’s feeling for an original act was pronounced. For each he mixed a unique brew, using at various times soot, turpentine, pigment, and water, always depending on his original inspiration. Each was executed with a sureness of brush that had sometimes induced critics to speak of his Orientalism. The “upsurges” of a moment filled each page, on which no-space and all-space found equanimity. These shapes were not symbols, but rather the analogues of movements and objects in nature, produced by light.