The seemingly imperturbable surfaces of hard-edged geometric abstract painting can conceal deeper passions, and such appears to be the case with the recent work of upstate New York–based Kasarian Dane. Dane’s pictures, which are comprised of stripes of solid color, seem the summa of restraint and condensation. But the tightrope that Dane walks in these fifteen untitled paintings from 2006 is to make reductivism a platform for expansiveness.

These exercises in delicate rigor begin with Dane’s attitude toward his materials. All his works are painted on thick sheets of aluminum, giving them a heavy,