❮ New York

Gallery

Oct 16 - Dec 06 2025 - 28 days left

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce Everyday Improvisations, an exhibition of new abstract paintings by Fran Shalom. This will be her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will be held on October 23 from 6-8pm. Quirky, ambiguous figures inhabit Fran Shalom’s paintings. Their bright, cartoony colors and buoyant forms fill each composition with playful energy. Her shapes, while fully abstract, reference the body and recognizable objects. She thinks of them as, “ambiguous characters who inhabit my studio keeping me company and often engaging in silent conversation.” Animated and boisterous Shalom’s characters are evocative of the familiar but remain just out of reach. A jaunty line meanders and encircles Shalom’s unruly shapes. Central forms and pared-down backgrounds echo icons. She gravitates to simple shapes and hard edges but builds depth through textured surfaces. Painting improvisationally, she adds and subtracts - building, wiping, scraping, and reshaping. This revealing and covering creates layered imagery. In many works, fields of rich color are interrupted by traces of past hues and ghosts of earlier forms.