Susanne Doremus’ turbulent abstractions willfully seek and then skirt dissolution. She dares uneasy harmonies, creating images with ceaselessly shifting compositions and temperatures. An expert kind of dimensional sparring is at the core of Doremus’ painting; distinct pictorial planes are layered in tense and expectant shuffles. Pattern retains a tenuous hold over these pictures, providing the glue Doremus regularly taxes to its breaking point.

Washy and indeterminate fields of predominantly pastel tones create the backdrop for her subsequent assaults. Insomnia (all works 1991) is pink and

Brazilian artist Daniel Senise’s first museum exhibition in the United States reveals an artist whose dogged pursuit of mystery more often than not yields results. Senise begins his paintings by staining, battering, soaking, scumbling, and abrading his raw canvas surfaces until they seem the tortured remnants of age and neglect. By a series of techniques, the results of which suggest frottage, Senise then selectively augments or draws out evocative forms from the mottled skins; over these he layers bits of recognizable imagery—rope, teeth, hands, circles—and occasionally English words or