To read my exhibition review “Echoes of Jensen: Pratt’s ‘The Apex Is Nothing’ Asks Us to Engage Beyond Conditioned Responses” in the New York Observer click below:

Echoes of Jensen: Pratt’s ‘The Apex Is Nothing’ Asks Us to Engage Beyond Conditioned Responses

By Stephen Wozniak

The Apex Is Nothing 
April 5–June 1, 2024
Curated by Ken Weathersby and John O’Connor

Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street
NY, NY 10011
(212) 647-7778
Mon.–Sat.
11 AM–6 PM
www.pratt.edu/exhibitions 

EXCERPT

In the first half of his life, abstract fine art forefather Alfred Jensen investigated and practiced just about every aesthetic genre and movement to date—from his fanciful Fauvist figurative paintings to the boogie-woogie gridwork he adapted from masters like Mondrian. By the 1950s, Jensen had developed and held firmly to an evolving visionary take on numeric, philosophic and scientific systems until the end of his life three decades later. The impasto-covered paintings he created during that period acted like arcane yet ordered truth charts ready for rigorous review. At the same time, they revealed his ingenuous, very human touch. While his largely inscrutable work could be read, it was often experienced for its visceral entry into any viewer’s sphere, wielding a power to ground abstract ideas into concrete reality. This effect was especially germane to the uncertainties of the post-war outlook, pointing to a deep-seated need for advancement and rule—like new systems and ordering mechanisms, exemplified in everything from the tech-driven international space race to the development of the United Nations. Today, we are faced with a similar sense of disorder and disarray from gross abundance—of goods, information, power and populations—leaving us to ask what the truth really is in our artificial, fractured and equivocal world.

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