This inspired pairing matches Suzuki, a veteran presence on the New York scene, with Hallberg, a young Brooklyn-based painter. Suzuki’s small, square canvases feature offset layers of concentric circles in bright, complementary colors. Because you can’t perceive both layers at once, the flickering surfaces defy you to focus on anything but the over-all picture. By contrast, the rings on Hallberg’s larger tondos, which underlay complex grids of interlocking squiggles, pose the opposite problem: you can comprehend the compositions only one element at a time. Between them, the two bodies of work set up a reverberating visual logic problem that may set your mind spinning faster than your retinas.(Crush Curatorial; Through Dec. 22.)
Taro Suzuki / Charlotte Hallberg
The New Yorker, November 23, 2017
