Kelly Reaves reviews Claire Sherman: Funeral Mountain at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, on view through August 1, 2015.

Reaves writes that the show "blends Romantic-era geological drama with mid-century action painting, modernizing it by default in the process… Half-inch-deep paint strokes are sliced with thin, tumbling lines, physically mimicking shattered boulders and scraped sand. They are not quite monochromatic, each painting mostly at one end of the shade spectrum but each also representing stark whites and opaque blacks in restrained ratios. Turpentine-soaked washes are intersected by, sometimes sloppily melding into, buttery blobs and slashes. Maybe it’s because she starts and finishes each painting in more-or-less a single sitting that they have a ton of visual energy…"