Broad Picnic: Pattern as Experience

In her seminal essay “Grids” published in 1979, Rosalind Krauss argues that the grid “[declares] the modernity of modern art.” Referring to artists whose practices rely on the structuring power of patterns rid of references to nature, she proposes that the use of grids announces the space of art as “autonomous and autotelic” and the modernist time as distinct from all preceding histories. Decades later, Broad Picnic at Europa Gallery revisits the concept of abstraction operating as a systemic repetition of pattern. In contrast to being the defining formal characteristic of a distinct art movement, patterning is presented in the exhibition not as a purely formalist endeavor, but as an observed element in everyday visual experiences of the contemporary world. The works in the exhibition are phenomenological studies of patterns that simultaneously inherit and subvert it, creating repetition that finds meaning in difference, order that exists to be broken, and rules undermined by play.

Broad Picnic articulates how patterns rendered as processes can evoke experiences of metamorphosis, hinging on our capacity to be moved by intensities that emanate from change. Artists Angela Bidak and Antonia Kuo, for example, rather than divorcing visual forms from their indexical ties to time and nature, embed abstract patterning back within natural phenomena and the ways they resonate with us. The impressions of nature captured in Four Phthalo Mist (2024) and Two Phthalo Mist (2024) are reiterated with variation, reminiscent of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series where meaning emerges through repeated representations, allowing temporal transitions to manifest on canvas. In Cyclone (2024), time and light are crystallized amidst movement as chemical reactions unfold and are directly translated onto light-sensitive silver gelatin paper—the act of painting itself is performed as a material transformation that generates patterns.

Alex Hutton’s paintings Regular Triple Load (2024) and Air Fluff (2024) extend this impressionistic portrayal of pattern into the seemingly mundane setting of the laundromat. In these paintings, the cyclical motions of laundering—the spins and folds of fabric—acquire an almost lyrical quality when reimagined with spatial dynamism and atmospheric colors. The welded kitchenware and nails in Jeff Williams’ Welded Domestic (2018) and Tacks (2024), as well as the soot marks from candles in Armando Nin’s Not dancing to every song (2023), also form patterns that both suggest repetitive (domestic) labor and a kind of lyricism at play, arising mysteriously from everyday banality. Similarly, in Marie Gyger’s Open Space, Milieu (2024), the carefully executed repetition and meticulous organization of paper origami shirts function as an analogy to industrial production and the standardization of the quotidian, but add an interesting twist as the fragility of handcrafted origami objects directly opposes production-line manufacturing.

This stands in stark contrast to how the grid is employed by modern artists like Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhardt, whose works, as Krauss argues, are driven by concerns for the spiritual, the metaphysical, and the universal. Broad Picnic approaches abstraction neither as simply proclaiming the autonomy of the picture plane, nor as imbued with transcendental ambitions; rather, it situates patterns within the material, temporal, and sensory contingencies of contemporary life, oscillating between the aesthetic and the social. Both Bjorn Copeland and Chris Martin, for example, create abstract patterns within and through found objects—slices of bread in Wonderbread (2010-2017) and discarded commercial billboards in Compress/sustain curls (2017). In If You Ride Like Lightning, You Crash Like Thunder (2024), Milly Skellington similarly produces patterns on a pre-existing image—a photograph of Dale Earnhardt’s fatal race car accident. The resulting work questions the stability of the photographic medium while serving as a visual allegory for the detrimental effects of speed in contemporary society, echoing Paul Virilio’s critique.

In the paintings of Peter Davies and Hugh Scott-Douglas, the pattern is further explored in the context of digitality as a key structuring force in the visual culture of our time. Davies’ That Moment (2024)—although entirely analog in execution—engages with the visual logic of digitality by referencing pixelation, fundamental patterns underpinning digital imaging. On closer inspection, the patterns reveal themselves to be grids hand-painted by the artist, whose tactile, imperfect labor imitates and approximates the discrete system of digital representation. Scott-Douglas’ Infrastucture (2024) relies on a more diverse array of technologies as he applies multiple layers of mediation and remediation onto the image (a 1920 Agfa Stock photograph by Dr. Paul Wolff) and its material substrate. As an aggregation of these individual effects, Infrastructure surveys the historical evolution of imaging technologies from early photomechanical processes to algorithmic computation. Abstract patterning as an element in art is examined here in terms of not just the aesthetic and the social, but also the technical and the infrastructural.

In the exhibition text, the picnic blanket is set up as a pictorial site where patterns figure, refigure, and transfigure. With the reference to Charles and Ray Eames’ film Powers of Ten, which explores how rapid shifts in scale create abstract patterns that structure perception, Broad Picnic reconceptualizes abstract patterning as a sensory and experiential force that affects us. It invites visitors to consider how patterns mediate or embody their perceptual engagement with reality as material, historical, and personal.

On view through December 31st, Broad Picnic features Angela Bidak, Bjorn Copeland, Alex Eagleton, Brock Enright, Marie Gyger, Miles Huston, Alex Hutton, Janine Iversen, Antonia Kuo, Suzanne Levesque, Servane Mary, Armando Nin, Michael Andrew Page, Milly Skellington, and Bronson Smillie  2024 at Europa Gallery.

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