John Yau reviews Chuck Webster: Look Around at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, on view through February 18, 2017.

Yau writes: “‘Liberty or Death’ is a breakthrough painting for Webster and, in that regard, a major step for this artist, whose work is always interesting. For one thing, he has opened up a vast space which he has populated with his striped mallet-like beings, an invented form that is simultaneously abstract and figurative, human and alien. It is the kind of space we might associate with the fantastic compositions of the English Romantic painter John Martin. That Webster is successfully able to pull this kind of space off now, when many abstract artists still approach spatiality with caution, is cause for celebration.”