Cynthia Hartling's Paintings at N3 Project Space Explore Abstraction and Process

Cynthia Hartling presented nine small paintings at N3 Project Space in Williamsburg, located at 85 North 3rd Street, 2nd Floor, between Wythe and Berry. The exhibition, reviewed in 2004, featured abstract works that often felt like interrupted moments of evolution, with pieces such as "Teistimeireacht" and "Firinne" from 1998 using Gaelic titles meaning testimony and truth. These paintings employed a "networking of lines" resembling scaffolding, where Hartling improvised with form and color over linear structures. In "Firinne," pink and yellow paint descended over alizarin networks, while a grey band entered from the bottom right. "Teistimeireacht" featured ascending brown networks breaking the canvas boundary, with a blue and grey scrim in the center. Hartling described her process as trying to piece through something and tame chaos, contrasting her warm, intense style with Agnes Martin's cool approach. Another painting, "Smoke," referenced Peter Halley's geometric representations of organic systems but with a simpler composition on a green ground, featuring an off-center rectangle and impasto black semicircles. Hartling's techniques included layering, scraping, and chipping away paint to reveal underlying layers, creating illusions of faces or landscapes that dissolved upon closer inspection. Her work balanced form and image without insisting on either, defying critical dissection through complexity.