Amy Kaufman: Recent Work @ Traywick Contemporary

Traywick Contemporary is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Bay Area artist Amy Kaufman, bringing together recent paintings and works on paper with an unexpected group of small-scale sculptures. Across two and three dimensions, Kaufman extends a visual language developed over decades, using pattern, repetition and accumulation as structures for variation and improvisation.

Familiar forms including radiating bursts, tangled lines, linear patterns and geometric shapes reappear in new configurations and in an expanded, assertive palette. Saturated yellows, greens, oranges, pinks and blues animate the compositions, while graphite, black, gray and metallic materials provide counterpoints of density and reflection. Color has long been integral to Kaufman’s work, dividing and interrupting surfaces and creating shifts in movement, depth and spatial perception.

Kaufman draws freely from the visual world around her, finding starting points in ordinary observations as readily as in art history and her own earlier work. Patterns and structures discovered in branches, street repairs, tire treads and other everyday encounters mingle with references to Islamic manuscripts and Mughal painting, decorative arts and historical references. Kaufman extracts a pattern, shape, color relationship or organizing principle and transforms it through repetition, variation and improvisation.

Often that process begins with a simple rule: lines radiate from a central point, forms accumulate into circular structures, or a field is divided according to a predetermined logic. But Kaufman is equally interested in what happens when the system becomes imperfect. Irregular intersections, remnants of earlier paintings and the unpredictable behavior of materials are allowed to remain. The resulting works move between order and disorder, precision and imperfection, intention and chance.

In Vortex of the heart, a gestural crown of leaf forms spirals within a structure defined in part by the sweep of Kaufman’s arm. Unexpected intersections are left intact, complicating the underlying order of the composition. In Fold 2, prismatic forms multiply outward from the center of the compositions, unfolding into an intricate field of alternating shapes, its apparent precision similarly disrupted by irregularities.

A notable addition to the exhibition is Kaufman’s return to sculpture. Constructed from remnants of cedar, maple and other wood, these works translate her longstanding concerns with pattern, color, edges and irregular geometry into three-dimensional space. In Garage band, made from wood left over from a garage rebuild, Kaufman assembles disparate blocks into a compact architectural structure considered from every side. Striped painted surfaces alternate with exposed wood, allowing the character and irregularities of the material to remain visible. The sculptures extend a process already at work on paper and canvas: imposing structure while leaving room for the unplanned.

Throughout the exhibition, patterns migrate between individual pieces and materials, while familiar forms are compressed, expanded, loosened or subjected to new rules. The resulting works extend Kaufman’s established vocabulary while revealing new possibilities within it.

Amy Kaufman lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has exhibited extensively since receiving her fine arts degree from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1990. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hammer Museum; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Crocker Art Museum; San Jose Museum of Art; Fogg Museum, Harvard University; Yale University Art Gallery; Weatherspoon Art Museum; Mills College Art Museum; Monterey Museum of Art; and United States Embassies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuwait.