“Susan Kiefer: Where Do We Go From Here?” features many new and recent paintings by Susan Kiefer, whose artistic practice has as its impetus the simplification, abstraction and ordering. Kiefer finds geometric shapes to be expressive of an extreme humanness that achieves a high level of intimate engagement. Kiefer’s shape of choice is the circle, symbolizing, as she most emphatically states “perfection, the earth, moon and solar system, even the atoms comprising the universe.”

Geometric forms are to some degree considered universal, with an origin shrouded in the earliest eras of human intellectual development. Mathematically oriented at first, they were “invented” by Thales and Euclid, and then perfected over the ages. They entered creative practice with Wassily Kandinsky, El Lizzitsky, and Naum Gabo, each of whom labored to escape from reality, and yet plumb it to its deepest contexts. Each of them represents a certain kind of imagination, expressive of avant-garde ideas of form, that eschew a certain ephemeral sensory exposition, in which the usual narratives become an all-over experience; objects are transformed or translated into basic geometric forms; and a whole array of recognitions takes the appearance of an abstract rendering. If one has an interest in looking, one can find value relationships and hints of narrative in these paintings.

Susan Kiefer achieves a similar degree of heightened perception through her regard for and use of geometric shapes, especially hard-edged geometric abstracts by considering the work of her artistic peers. She was “drawn to images with simplicity and clear composition” and began to prioritize these conditions in her own work in 2020. She has graduated to the employment of angular shapes, partly inspired by the work of Thornton Willis, and as background patterns in some of her newest work.

Kiefer’s forms create either opaquely narrative spaces through which one may have the opportunity for an experience that’s neither overtly evident nor sensually suggested; or they receive her forms as value representations that are simultaneously symbolic and relatable, and universal enough to translate into other visual mediums. Not every painted image has a story to tell, but it does contain a variety of visual elements that combine to present a formal event of infinite value. In works such as “On A Clear Day” and “The Meaning of It All,” the title acts like a question or a challenge. That is part and parcel of an idealistically distinct work—the raising of an ideological bar within the direct aesthetic moment. Simple words compel us to consider the elemental allegories available to us. It’s a vision worth an extended view.