Carla Accardi and Lucio Fontana

Last year, when this gallery presented the first New York solo show in decades of octogenarian Carla Accardi’s works, the paintings enchanted but also called out for context. Well, here it is, in the form of a museum-quality collection of pieces on the wall (if not necessarily on canvas) by two luminaries in the postwar Italian art firmament. Seen together, Accardi’s exquisite sense of patterning influences how one views the puncture wounds Lucio Fontana inflicted upon his own canvases, and Fontana’s disruptions of surface—and the depths they imply—remind you of Accardi’s flatness, that her “infinite space” (to use the exhibition’s title) is horizontal and her marks could easily radiate outward interminably. Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, 1965, a tall, thin sheet of copper with a vertical incision that gives one a peek at the lightless beyond, shimmers when viewed at an oblique angle; it is the most seductive work in the show. Accardi’s Senza titolo, 1972, which, with its tessellated wavy black lines on tan paper mounted on canvas is a loose-limbed take on Bridget Riley and a precursor to Philip Taaffe, is reason alone for us to begin paying her the attention and respect she deserves.