4 September 2025
Susan Rothenberg: The Weather at Hauser & Wirth New York. My first time encountering her work in the flesh—these are such slow release paintings. Was especially taken by Dos Equis (acrylic and tempera on canvas, 169.9 x 296.2 x 4.1 cm, 1974), a big white one of two horses overlapping, the whole composition sliced by lines intersecting twice near the canvas's horizontal midline, once near the top middle edge, and once near the bottom middle edge. The effect is kaleidoscopic, almost as if you are watching the forms alternate between embossing and debossing themselves, the mere presence of the intersecting lines recontextualizing/refreshing/re-presenting the angles of the horses as elemental pivot points. There is also the barely perceptible ghost of what perhaps could have been a first try at placing one of the left x's lines hiding underneath the final layer of white, as if innumerable axes form the architecture of the painting and she has chosen to cover all but those that remain. So much done with seemingly so little.