Jason Rosenfeld reviews Holly Coulis: Table Studies at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, on view through October 22, 2017.

Rosenfeld writes: “Coulis’s subjects are not erotic. They are not vanitas images. They are not naturalistic. Instead, they somehow propel you into an imaginative space of sign systems denoting some arcane language—Pale Table, Red Tumblers (2017) resembles pictographic charts, as if the objects enumerated are symbolic beyond their prosaic referents. She seems to be trying to communicate in a new way. There is something noble, in the political and meteorological maelstrom of 2017, in trying to create a bit of order.”