“What I’m Looking At” a column where I digest art worth seeing, and whatever else is on my mind. Below, thoughts on what’s in the galleries in New York, July 2024.
Pacita Abad, “Underwater Wilderness” at Tina Kim Gallery
I’ll be honest: I wasn’t 100 percent sold on Abad when I first saw the late artist’s current retrospective at MoMA PS1. But then I looked at the photos of it on my phone and her vision really snapped together for me. I think this may come down to me thinking that her signature “trapunto” device (painting on stitched and padded textiles) sometimes works against her. In person, the images are full of wrinkles in a way that doesn’t really feel like part of the intended composition to me; photos of them flatten these out so that you see her overall sense of design better. Abad was deliberately working between traditions, between folk textiles and representational painting, so I think you can take the unresolved texture as a symbol of how experimental this was. In any case, the underwater landscapes in this Tina Kim show are as good as anything at PS1. Above all, they are wonders as very specifically observed aquatic scenes from Abad’s native Philippines, while still walking that balance between painting and fabric art.
— Ben Davis
