Creating art that evolves, that deepens in front of one’s very eyes, is no easy task but it is truly exciting when it is achieved. Upon arrival at Matt Connor’s recent show of paintings and drawings at Ortuzar Projects, I found the work instantly seductive in its use of color and scale. This could have been enough, really-—but then, within no time, the work revealed an engaging exploration of the very nature of abstraction. The artworks were suddenly working together to playfully tease out simple and profound ideas that are the bricks upon which abstraction is built.

        The End Threatens to Obscure the Beginning is one of three large paintings (80 x 60 inches) that anchored the show. In this layered work, a large dark purply-blue field contains two nearly identical elements that vaguely resemble quarter notes (♩). One is black, and the other is black and white. Each is edged with an aura of color—electric blue, brilliant pink, a rusty orange. My initial impression was of a simple and efficient composition that deftly employs repetition and variation to create a very satisfying “non-objective” painting. I then wondered why the artist chose these colors, or how he decided to paint this form twice. To wonder why the artist made these choices, to try to suss out how the artist pulled these elements out of thin air and made them work, is one of the joys of looking at non-representational work.

        Then…my eye shifted. Suddenly I saw the painting differently. I saw not two nearly identical forms, but one form painted twice, as though the form was a tower, once in shadow and then once illuminated on one side. The black sphere at the foot of the tower remains black implying that the sphere is inherently black, even when exposed to light—it was already a darker black to begin with, I notice. The painting suddenly has a narrative—light moves across an object—and it is satisfying in another new way.

        The black sphere in The End Threatens to Obscure the Beginning reappears in a smaller painting across the room, Macaw Shard with Void, but in this work, the sphere almost works in an opposite way. The exhibition’s press release explains that Connors based the painting on a shard of glazed Art Deco pottery. Once you read this, you immediately see the bright red, yellow, green, and orange shard. The shape of the shard suggests that it is a convex piece of ceramic “placed” on a robin’s-egg blue field. The black sphere functions in opposition to the dimensionality of the shard. The artist has flattened the sphere into a simple circle that is slightly transparent, overlaying and interrupting the representation of the shard to provide a pure compositional maneuver. This is so simple, but also intellectual and a little humorous.

        The robin’s egg blue field is then repeated in a painting called Post Counter Poise. This painting feels like a representation of an overhead view of a photo laying nearly squarely and nearly centered on a tabletop. A purple smudge on the blue field could be an arbitrary part of the painting or, perhaps, Connor’s table has a smudge on it? Not knowing is part of the fun of the painting. The image within the image—which I saw as a depiction of a tent flap blowing in the wind—has a slender white frame around it. The tent I see is large, like a circus tent—the sides are blue and white stripes and the canopy is striped green and orange. The interior is dark, there is a slight purple triangle suggesting a shallow beam of light. The lower right corner of the picture has stripes of warm colors alluding to unidentifiable objects in the foreground.

        This image within an image reappears in a larger painting across the room, Inset Counter Poise (64 x 58 inches). Here the white edge that framed the image in the former painting was hugely expanded to create a vast white field surrounding the image. The compositional elements are essentially the same, but they are crisper, cleaner and slightly adjusted. The movement and shadow feel more deliberate. Of the pair of paintings, I had actually seen this one first. I read the picture as a depiction of fabric—clothing specifically—perhaps where the bottom of a striped shirt overlapped a pair of striped pants. I saw a rope swaying through the foreground. When I gave this painting a second look after seeing its counterpart, I, with the new reference, saw the tent. More interestingly, by having both paintings in the room, I saw how Connors makes compositional choices that bring the viewer to a place where their own personal references start to slip in to replace those of the artist.

        Among the works on paper in the show, Untitled (c.2024) was especially striking. It consists of a bold red glyph. The glyph has two enclosed spaces, one of which is left white and one which is red—but a lighter red than the glyph itself. Observing this variation in shading leads one to realize the marks which form the glyph are not lines, at least not in the purest sense of a mark made by a single drag of a tool over a surface. Rather, they are colored-in shapes—four rectangles and a hooked arc—assembled to form a drawing that references line work or calligraphy but is not actually either. This is a subtle distinction to make but this kind of smart and funny move by the artist made the show rewarding.

        In this drawing I noticed that where two pencil lines meet to form a corner, one or both of the lines sneak past their intersection, leaving a little tail. I notice that in the shard painting, the blue paint lines that form the shard also extend beyond the shape of the shard. A few paintings have visible pencil marks that one would guess were an early part of the artist’s process. In another Untitled (c.2024) drawing a smudgy grid undergirding the work’s other elements is plainly visible. I like these little incidental details. They feel like a choice to let the viewer see the process. These are active paintings and drawings and it is important to see what they are doing. Matt Connors is successfully making a viewer not only think about his painting but also about painting, broadly speaking.

Paul Moreno is an artist, designer, and writer working in Brooklyn, New York. He is a founder and organizer of the New York Queer Zine Fair. His work can be found on Instagram @ bathedinaftherthought. He is the New York City editor of the New Art Examiner.