Bettina Blohm's Intuitive Geometric Paintings at Marc Straus Gallery

Bettina Blohm's first exhibition with Marc Straus Gallery runs from October 26 to December 12, 2014 at 299 Grand Street in New York City. The German-born artist, who splits her time between New York and Berlin, creates abstract paintings through an intuitive process of adding and removing paint. Her works feature loosely geometric shapes and patterns, with grids that appear to twist and spill across the canvas. Procrustean Physics (2014) displays a black-blue background overlaid with a diagonal white grid, creating diamond shapes that shift in spatial perception. Great Escape (2014) employs black curved strokes within tilted squares, evoking a flickering diagram with restless energy. Two works on paper from her Diagram series incorporate vertical lines bisected by irregular circles, using acrylic, charcoal, and ink. Blohm's practice involves extensive landscape drawings that inform her paintings, though this exhibition focuses solely on non-representational work. The show coincides with a survey of her landscape paintings traveling through German institutions including Kunsthalle Bremen and Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen. Her artistic vocabulary explores interchanges between figure and ground through evolving forms that reward close observation.