American Abstract Artists

August 4, 2026August 4, 2026, by Meg Lipke

Polychrome at Bernay Fine Arts

Installation view: Polychrome, Bernay Fine Art

Polychrome, on view at Bernay Fine Arts, brings together paintings by Jenny Kemp, Audrey Stone, and Deborah Zlotsky in an exhibition on abstraction and geometric structure. Across three distinct practices, the artists use color as structure and sensory experience, although each arrives at abstraction through her own internal logic. Here abstraction is a form of concentration, examining the texture of experience: how can attention intensify and shift? How can time accumulate? How can systems hold together and slip apart? Artist Meg Lipke, a long-time colleague and friend of the artists, visited the show and addressed questions for the following conversation.

June 17, 2026June 18, 2026, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Well, Hell. Beautiful. Mary Shah and Rachael Wren at Rick Wester Fine Art

No one was supposed to say “beautiful.” Oh God, no. Not in the mid-1990s art scene I knew, when I worked at a then-trendy, high-gloss art magazine and beauty had all the social standing of a shrimp cocktail at a theory seminar. Beauty was too easy and too ready to come in smiling and ruin everyone’s severe little mood. A serious work could resist you from across the room. But beautiful? Beautiful was what your aunt said when she had run out of things to say.

Then I walked into Mary Shah and Rachael Wren’s In the Ecstasy of the Sun at Rick Wester Fine Art and thought: well, hell. Beautiful.

May 21, 2026May 25, 2026, by Etty Yaniv

Still Abstract at 90: American Abstract Artists

American Abstract Artists turns 90 this year, an unusual achievement for an artist-run group. Its anniversary show, Abstract by Definition: An Index, opened in April at Art Cake in Brooklyn, curated by Saul Ostrow, who brought 88 current members together under a single roof: a curatorial puzzle, an organizational feat, and a long-running argument about what abstraction can be. A companion exhibition at D. Wigmore Fine Art on West 57th Street focuses on the group’s founders and work made between 1936 and 1950 and runs through July. Here, painter Jacob Cartwright, who serves as AAA’s Secretary, reflects on the group’s nomination-only structure, how a show this size actually comes together, and where he wants AAA to go next.

May 20, 2025May 21, 2025, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Sensuously Severe: Why Artists Call Don Voisine the Real Deal

*Lift Off,* 2024, Oil on wood panel, 24 x 20 inches

Don Voisine doesn’t do studio visits for Instagram. He doesn’t paint to please an algorithm. And he definitely doesn’t care if you call his new show “timely.” For over forty years, he’s explored the same visual territory—taut geometric abstraction with a personal twist—and somehow, he’s still finding fresh ground.

April 12, 2025April 11, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Audrey Stone

In the studio with Way Down, 2024, 50×50.25” photo credit Andrew Schwartz @artphotobiz

On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Audrey has been in DUMBO since March, 2024. Her studio is at 45 Main Street, #1052.