Despite the widespread identification of Bay Area painting with expressive figuration, many artists work in Constructivist-, Suprematist-, and de Stijl-inspired modes. Of the painters, David Simpson is among the strongest. His investigations of precise balances between the visual weights of a few razor-edged rectangles judiciously deployed around large square fields of uniform color began in the early ’70s after a decade of more painterly compositions of horizontal or arced stripes and stains. Here, he showed work in one of his three ongoing formats, that of thin rectangles or bars usually