Suzanne Joelson's 2016 Bushwick Exhibition Features Collage Paintings Inspired by Supermarket Banners

Suzanne Joelson presented six large paintings at Studio 10 in Brooklyn from October 14 to November 13, 2016. The works incorporated discarded vinyl supermarket banners depicting eggs, kale, and chicken, which Joelson discovered while jogging with her husband. These collaged elements introduced a delirious scale and emotional impact to her practice, moving beyond her reputation as a theoretically rigorous artist. Paintings like 'Massaging Kale' transformed striated paint into representational analogs of vegetables, while 'Crack, Rake, Crate' featured a hanging rake and cropped egg imagery that created metaphorical transformations. 'Egg Game' played with postmodern rebukes to abstraction, and 'As It Happened' utilized wood panel construction to contrast violent splintering with rational shapes. 'Grasping the Center' assembled sky blue vinyl fragments and white paint in a Frankenstein-like composition. The exhibition demonstrated Joelson's ability to master contemporary painting's conflicting ideas through feeling rather than rationality, with every painted moment occupying dual identities as abstract paint and food references.