Pat Adams' Then Found exhibition at Victoria Munroe Fine Art showcases abstract paintings from 1997-2016

Victoria Munroe Fine Art in New York City presented Then Found, a solo exhibition of abstract painter Pat Adams featuring nearly twenty works from 1997 to 2016. The show included key paintings like Through (2013), Here Occurring (2009), and Drawn (1997), all sharing symmetrical compositions with central ovoid forms. Adams' distinctive mixed-media approach incorporates crushed seashells, sand, and other particles into pigment, creating textured surfaces that slow visual perception. The artist, based in Bennington, Vermont since teaching at Bennington College for thirty years until 1993, previously exhibited regularly at New York's Zabriskie Gallery from 1956 to 2009. This exhibition marked her first New York solo show in seven years, following her 2017 career survey Gatherum of Quiddities at the Bennington Museum. Critical attention has followed Adams throughout her nearly seventy-year career, with writers including Dore Ashton, Barbara Rose, Max Kozloff, Jed Perl, and Hilton Kramer engaging with her work. The paintings demonstrate Adams' commitment to non-figurative, perceptual abstraction that explores geometric configurations, color interactions, and phenomenological investigations. Works like Behold (2004) and Where it Goes (2002) present rectilinear compositions of colored squares, while They Say (2016) exemplifies her use of gestural lines for what she calls the 'arousal of kinetic sensation.'