Peter Malone reviews Dana Saulnier: Nearly Distant at First Street Gallery, New York.

Malone writes: “Unlike many committed abstract painters today who flirt with spatial depth and the occasional image, yet hold fast to the security of the modernist surface, Saulnier shows no discomfort with illusionary space, or modeling, or receding planes, or atmospheric depth, or figurative suggestion… There may be many abstract painters today who blend abstraction with pictorial depth and sometimes mimetic imagery, but most are clearly reluctant to excavate too ardently lest they poke through the membrane and find they’ve switched sides. Figurative painters who utilize abstraction’s gestural lexicon seem much less anxious in that same space.”