It’s easy to misinterpret Absalon’s work: as a Minimalist pastiche, for example, or a Bauhaus homage, a faux-utopian solution to the problems of modern living. But KW’s retrospective of his output dismissed such clunky art-historical assumptions, concentrating instead on the artist’s deep, urgent need to find a way of both participating in society and sheltering from it. Absalon—born in Ashdod, Israel, and called Meir Eshel until he adopted his pseudonym in 1987—is known primarily for his “Cellules.” These small structures—stripped of all detail, rendered stark white inside and

If you want to know what interests inform Bridget Riley’s work, you could study her modernist predecessors: Mondrian, perhaps, or Seurat. But it would be at least as illuminating to go on a nature walk with your eyes wide open. Implicit in Riley’s paintings is an intimate knowledge of the workings of nature and how things are perceived by the human eye. No matter that her work is abstract and never depicts landscapes. Just as nature reinvents itself minute to minute under the influence of light, rain, and wind, Bridget Riley’s paintings keep changing under your gaze.

Riley’s exhibition was