Lucy Stein

Stepping into the white cube, one is confronted with a cycle of thirty paintings collectively titled “Wise Wound 1–30” (all works 2015), installed at the height of a woman’s womb. The aligned rhythm of these square wooden panels is broken up by three large, higher-hung canvases—Desperate (Horny); Green Goddess; Burn; and a bleach-on-denim piece titled Mermaid Carcass, which is positioned low to the ground. While the show’s title, “Moonblood/Bloodmoon,” implies associations ranging from menstruation to lunar effects, the materials staining the surfaces of these works include beetroot, baby lotion, wax, and shells.

Each of the smaller pieces suggests an exploration of formal friction with liberal sheddings of color on white, grounded supports. Lucy Stein’s raw paintings investigate the medium’s domination by myths of gendered creativity. If expressionism and essentialism marked the modernist painting discourse revolving around creative genius and production, Stein’s starting point is reproduction—in both the appropriative and the generative sense. The latter method is best displayed in Wise Wound 14, a monotype print-on-panel work of random paint patterns reminiscent of a petri dish that also traces the bearing force of women’s bodies in backwards letters, which would seem to mock the act of deciphering.

Stein’s babbling voice in the audio installation Squirming the Worm: The Wise Wound interferes with the visual and tactile surfaces around it. Rather than representing anything in particular, this exhibition frames a multiplicity of views, connecting the mysterious universal impact of the moon with sexuality to embody rhythms of life and flows of energy.