Sterling Ruby, SP301 (All Photos By Gail)

If you dig Abstract and Colorfield paintings, then you are going to love Flag Art Foundation’s current group show, Surface Tension. This dynamic group show focuses on a selection of contemporary artists whose approach to abstraction incorporates a range of materials, processes, and techniques — such as sanding, stitching, dying, and layering — to draw attention to the dynamic potential of a painting’s surface. Artists include:

El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Kadar Brock, Cecily Brown, Sarah Crowner, Sam Gilliam, Sterling Ruby, Sean Scully, Ryan Sullivan, Lesley Vance, Rebecca Ward, and Garth Weiser.

Inspired by Los Angeles gang culture and the use graffiti as a means of ‘tagging’ territories, Sterling Ruby’s mark-making presents a timely alternative to classic painterly techniques. Ruby’s atmospheric spray painting SP301, 2014 (top photo), organizes the canvas in bands of pink, acid green, and black, varying in shading and intensity as a product of using readily available aerosol paints.

The materiality of canvas plays a central role in Sarah Crowner’s Untitled (Leaves), 2015, a diptych of sewn, painted panels that plays with repetition of color and form.

Kadar Brock’s deredemirtdxii, 2015, was constructed, or more accurately worn down, through a labor-intensive (and often repeated) process of underpainting, priming, and power-sanding, producing a work whose tattered and marbled composition serves as evidence to its making.

In addition to the lovely artworks, Flag also has a spectacular scenic patio from which you can see the sunset over New Jersey, and watch ships come in to port. Nice.

Surface Tension will be on Exhibit Through December 12th, 2015, at FLAG Art Foundation, Located at West 545 25th Street, 9th Floor, in the Chelsea Gallery District.