Exhibition: Art Basel Feature MH PT

Sculptor Matt Hoyt and painter Patricia Treib have each developed their own personal lexicon of abstract gesture and form through concentrated work focused on observation and modulation. Hoyt’s sculptures elicit a sense of deep geological time, seeming to hail from an epoch lost to history or from a distantly imagined future. The arrangement of handmade objects here are larger than Hoyt’s typical works, which would normally fit in the palm of a hand. His works resemble stony corals, bones, or seed pods, invested with the dynamic qualities of sea creatures or visionary architecture. Treib’s paintings also conjure up imagined spaces, appearing in the overlaps and gaps of lush and sensuous surfaces. Her new works build on a cadre of motifs which she modulates with careful deliberation from previous iterations of her own paintings. Treib focuses on compositions from a series of disparate images, delving into how color depicts form and delineates the shadows and spaces in between.

Trieb’s bold, translucent, and calligraphic gestures dance on the canvas, while Hoyt’s volumes and matrices seem to hold a locked potential. Their works inhabit a state between recognizability and mystery.