Mickalene Thomas. Sista Sista Lady Blue, 2007; chromogenic print; 40 3/8 x 48 1/2 in. © Mickalene Thomas/Artists Rights Society, New York. Courtesy of SFMOMA, San Francisco. Photo: Katherine Du Tiel.

In the current political moment, in which women and people of color struggle (as always, but now even more tangibly) for visibility, Matisse/Diebenkorn at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)—two canonical artists shown in cross-generational conversation—is a bit too pretty, perfect, and White-male-centered. Does Matisse need another show? Is this exhibition, heavily publicized by this major institution, relevant today? It’s a gendered imbalance of male painters of female subjects, again. As a Mexican female critic and artist, I enjoyed Matisse/Diebenkorn the way one enjoys art history that feels distant; like overhearing someone else’s conversation, I had the feeling of being somewhere I did not belong.

Yet, after I passed through the exhibition’s exit, one more room sparked my hope and excitement. Accessible without a surcharged ticket, this exhibition was also curated by Matisse/Diebenkorn curator Janet Bishop, and had its own wall text and title. M/D: Coda operates as a footnote—or even punctuation—to the main show, ending it with an ellipsis, rather than a full stop.

This appendix, which features Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Bechtle, Elizabeth Payton, Amy Sillman, Rachel Harrison, and Mickalene Thomas, brought Matisse and Diebenkorn’s influence into a contemporary dialogue by showing how their lineages extend to other artists across time. Most importantly, this gallery showcases artists of other identities. Whereas women are only subjects of representation in Matisse/Diebenkorn, M/D: Coda presents women as authors of images. Thomas’s Sista Sista Lady Blue (2007) struck me the most in this regard.

The photograph, a staged portrait, features a confident woman on a couch, surrounded by patterned textiles that create a soft, colorful setting. Her gaze pierces back at viewers. Another woman figure, reflected in a background mirror, also gazes back. This piece is unapologetic and empowering: a woman who looks back, a woman who stages representation, and a woman who quotes Matisse and updates his work to this time—a moment when a woman of color deserves her own construction of visibility.

Matisse/Diebenkorn’s relationship to M/D: Coda becomes a matter of real estate. Five artists are compressed in one last gallery—an exhibition that exists to make amends. Although I salute and value this coda, the distribution of artists could change even more, so that the distribution of representation appears to be more timely and balanced. Could we perhaps imagine a Mickalene Thomas solo show that ends with a small gallery with a few Matisse paintings?

M/D: Coda will be on view through May 29, 2017.

Carolina Magis Weinberg is a whether reporter, and a sight specific artist and critical writer. Her projects investigate discrete forms of otherness such as the accent, which she considers to expand from orality, becoming a visual form in the production of the migrating maker.

Noam Rappaport. Dogleg, 2015; oil, acrylic, high-density foam, paper, canvas; 90 x 55 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Ratio 3, San Francisco.

Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Justin Mata reviews Noam Rappaport: Dogleg at Ratio 3 in San Francisco.

Noam Rappaport’s artwork exists in a continuum of modernist object-making, a growing history of formal exploration. The works in Dogleg at Ratio 3 fit seamlessly into conversations about minimalism, abstract expressionism, and color field painting, but they are not dated. Any similarities to his aesthetic predecessors are unironic. Rappaport’s work feels soothingly honest because he does not quote giants of art history but instead investigates specific forms and colors to construct a highly distinctive visual vocabulary.

Rappaport’s roughly seven-foot paintings feature shaped canvases on which rectilinear forms intersect with and overlap each other. The works have intensely saturated layers with loosely brushed washes or, occasionally, heavy slathering of paint and medium. Stick-like pieces of painted wood appear in some, adding elements of line to the composition. Light washes of sky and aqua blues produce fields of shimmering color and a sense of ephemerality or movement, a possible nod to Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series (1967–1988) with his wash-like compartmentalization of color. In contrast, the thicker impasto areas of blacks, brick reds, and vegetal greens immediately ground some paintings, laying claim to the wall. In Dogleg (2015) these techniques play off one another, fighting for space in a canvas that looks like two elongated rectangles colliding. These shaped canvases rely on the gallery wall as a compositional element of the work in a way that recalls the late Ellsworth Kelly’s shaped paintings. Both artists’ works become almost graphic elements of the total architecture of the gallery.

In contrast to the paintings, the hanging sculptures are modestly sized, no more than twenty-three inches in any direction. Featuring dense pigment on wood and aluminum, the materials absorb light off of the surface, leaving profound depths of color. The works have mirrored compositions, with key elements (such as holes or intersections of planes) located in the center of the work, creating symmetrical tops and bottoms with slight hints of linear perspective. The receding spaces created by this perspective, coupled with subtle shadow play, make the sculptures feel more substantial than their humble dimensions, implying angles and geometries that resonate outward into the cavernous Ratio 3.

Eventually Rappaport’s investigations become stalled by a monotony of form. The artist made several of the paintings from the same template, which would seemingly generate compelling studies in seriality, but instead results in a limited vocabulary. The artist has ultimately restricted the elements of the paintings and sculptures in his obsessive search for the ideal combination of composition, color, and texture. He found his personal visual language, one steeped in the rich history of modernist painting. Now what else can he say with it? 

Noam Rappaport: Dogleg is on view through February 27, 2016, at Ratio 3, San Francisco.

Justin Mata is an artist and writer living in San Francisco. He received his BFA from California College of the Arts and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts.