Paul Behnke reviews Pat Passlof: Paintings from the 1950s at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through December 20, 2014.

Behnke writes: "In Ionian, the ready pictorial convention of an interior room that opens to an expansive outdoor view is abstracted to the point that portions of the picture plane begin to function non-objectively. While the upper right corner seems to recede into a blue expanse, this reading is quickly subverted by a form, flattened by pattern, that seems to enter the room space from a distance but upends the traditional perspective by immediately bringing any such reading to a halt as it is cross cut by a thick, black line. This line induces an abrupt, sharp change in the reading of the space by yanking the yellow and red striped form into the interior space and smashing it flat … All of these elements; interior and exterior, natural and plastic, pattern and uninterrupted expanse, all work together to disrupt a common reading of space or to blend that reading with plastic concerns to jolt the viewer from a state of complacency and sureness."