Frank Bowling's Metropolitanblooms Exhibition at Hales Project Room Highlights 1978-1986 Works

Frank Bowling's exhibition Metropolitanblooms at Hales Project Room in New York from September 6 to October 15, 2017, featured six works created between 1978 and 1986. These intimate paintings emerged after Bowling relocated from New York to London, shifting from monumental abstraction to smaller-scale pieces with layered, swampy drips. The show coincided with a Bowling exhibition at the gallery's London location, his major retrospective at Haus der Kunst in Munich, and his inclusion in Tate Modern's Soul of a Nation exhibition. Despite these concurrent events, New York had seen little of Bowling since his 1971 Whitney Museum solo show. Two standout works on paper, Autumn Flare (1986) and Vase (1985), emphasized physicality through thickly applied paint and torn edges. Bowling's 1972 artist statement framed abstract painting within Formalism as a political act of proving freedom, a perspective he maintained while resisting the 'black art' label in early 1970s criticism. The exhibition connected Bowling to peers like Sam Gilliam, Al Loving, Helen Frankenthaler, and Lynda Benglis, highlighting his role in expanding abstract painting's political potential.