This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 16, 2011 - "Ruptures" at Hoffman Lachance Contemporary explores a variety of contemporary engagements with painted abstraction, with delightful and intriguing results. Curated by Normal, Ill.-based Michael Wille, the show features the work of 11 painters who have varying relationships to mid-century modernist painting tenets.
Among the wildest variations are Zach Buchner's and Trew Schriefer's works, which amp up the familiar vocabulary of abstraction with elements of glitter, graffiti, spraypaint and rhinestones.
On a more cerebral level are works by Thomas Vance, which offer contemporary interpretations of Cubist found and painted abstractions; Jeffrey Cortland Jones' minimalist, layered white paintings; and Wille's own "Piles No. 3" (2011), a scene of crashing grids sweetly redolent of the 1950s.
Other artists (and they're all worth noting) include Gianna Commito, Linnea Paskow, John Kissick, Jared Sprecher, Michael Perrone, and Melissa Oresky.
Ivy Cooper, a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon art critic.