ACME’s late summer group show, Passage, chooses subtlety over ‘statement’, quietly suggesting a spectrum of emerging ideas and directions through its artists’ varied address of notions of passage or transition in their work. In doing so, it also gives a glimpse of the gallery’s particular wealth of extraordinary painters. Even some of the work that is not painting here has a ‘painterly’ quality (e.g., Amir Zaki or Jennifer Steinkamp). The converse holds true amongst ACME’s unabashedly heterodox painters. Dawn Clements’ draughtsman-like work has always been about transition. But consider Daniel Cummings’ Arp-esque scrollwork here as a plan for a sculpture. Or Michael Henry Hayden’s emerald-green painting-object, Untitled (Palm Frond #8), which, painterliness to one side, might be just such a fragment. Kristin Baker goes small, too – with her almost tactilely rendered Dog-Eared ‘pages’. In addition to the gallery’s best known stars (e.g., Aaron Morse, Kurt Kauper, Tomory Dodge), Neal Tait and Natalie Frank compose brilliant essays on metamorphosis with their work here. If you love painting, the show is not to be missed.

ACME
6150 Wilshire Blvd., Spaces 1 & 2
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Show runs thru September 17, 2016