“Mothers of Men”

What better way to celebrate than with friends: For its tenth anniversary, the gallery is hosting an exhibition of works by Moyra Davey, R. H. Quaytman, and Vivian Suter. The show addresses kinship and gender and is based on a yearlong correspondence between the three artists, all of them mothers of millennial sons, as they note in the press release. In addition to their own offspring, they also wrote to each other, starting in 2016 after a gathering in Athens, about what pills they take, the weather, dogs, and dust. The result of their exchange is an exhibition not just of three individuals who make things but of a trio of powerful artists contaminating one another in the best possible way.

The display here is a small gift to the spectator, who might have never linked the work of these women otherwise. Contained in a single rectangular gallery, Suter’s characteristically unstretched, hanging canvases invite us in from the glass entrance. In the back of the room, Quaytman’s eye-bending paintings beckon us further, while Davey’s signature mailed works accompany us on the way there.

Their media are different, their methods, too, and then it all comes together in a convergence of textures, colors, and even direct collaborations, such as Quaytman and Davey’s Chapter 33 Mothers of Men and Emma (Spider), or Quaytman’s portrait of Suter, also titled Chapter 33 Mothers of Men, all 2017. This show is beautiful in many ways: formally, of course, but also because it demonstrates a porosity and openness in the artists and their processes—the art of letting things happen.