So Sweet… So Perverse

A yawn is just a silent shout, and Minimalism has always yearned to yell into the void with a quiet voice. This revolutionary reductive language is like a vampire; it cannot be killed and will never die. The movement came to the fore on the heels of abstract expressionism in a desperate attempt to separate itself from the inward looking artist. “So Sweet… So Perverse” is wanting to explore the politics of aesthetics, and how deep meaning can be found in near absence. Frank Stella was exhausted by having his work be accused of cold intellectualism, when in fact it simply found a different kind of struggle, as if his lack of brushwork was somehow evidence of apathy or insincerity. Stella’s stripes are the paths of brushstrokes, they lead only into painting. He was simply trying to find the right words to say the best things. This literal approach to art-making and the materials that facilitate it is what this exhibition strives to emphasize with panache.

Explosive gestures were not enough to keep the tastemaker’s attention any longer; this kinky formalism was the consequence, and a realistic way toward a then Greenburgian utopia. The forms their predecessors used became suddenly, hopelessly obsolete; “fiddling rustics” as the uncredited narrator of Emile de Antonio’s seminal documentary on post-war American painting explained. “So Sweet… So Perverse” is perhaps a revisitation of these revolving values, even a remembrance or perhaps another reaction to an art world that is pivoting away from the tyranny of figuration that has reined over the last several years.

The works on view swerve playfully amongst the personal, the subversive and the political. Minimalism as an “ism” is a declaration, and remains to be so. It’s not a fad but an ethos, a way of making concrete sense of a convoluted world in the way art has always done. It is imperfectly perfect, a grid laid over a culture that is at best a mess, if not mostly interesting. Derek Franklin takes on cast-concrete, Jessica Sanders fondles wax, Michael Rey introduces a new series of ceramic works, Peter Gronquist built a bomb, Sylvan Lionni continues his indefatigable pursuit of challenging his super heroes, Jim Lee does the same and the rest do the rest. It’s a congregation of weirdoes doing unexpected things in this unexpected new chapter of the art world while still vibrating from the influence of Frank Stella‘s legacy. Everything leads back to the grid, please join us as we take on the matrix with fashionable eyewear.

Artists
Derek Franklin, Ethan Greenbaum, Peter Gronquist, Terry Haggerty, Jim Lee, Sylvan Lionni, Michael Rey, Jessica Sanders, Frank Stella

Gallery hours Tue-Sat 11 am – 6 pm

Exhibition Duration 12 July – 30 August 2025

www.freightandvolume.com

Location:
Freight + Volume
39 Lispenard St.
10013 New York, NY
United States