
Ryan Sullivan
On one hand, this show of six big untitled paintings could be described as something of a comeback for Ryan Sullivan, an inventive abstractionist occasionally if unduly associated with the vacuous pastiche of zombie formalism. It was good timing: The six years since Sullivan’s last solo outing in New York had witnessed not only the overwhelming renascence of figurative painting, but also its own, much larger strain of market-driven zombification. The moment feels ripe for a new consideration of what beginnings can be made from abstraction’s presumed dead end.
On the other hand, these paintings