Meredith Hoffheins reviews Tomma Abts at David Zwirner, New York, on view through October 25, 2014.

Hoffheins writes that Abts’ "surfaces are pristine—barely a trace of the brush. She actually holds her work while she paints. The closeness she has with her work is palpable. Abts is known to take as long as one year on her paintings, yet they never look over-worked. Visible textures from painted-over work look like they were always meant to interact with the final, decisive layer. Feke–an almost monochrome yellow painting–has a particularly important band of texture across the top one-sixth of the canvas. This over-painted remnant of previous work causes a slight textural shift and fills the empty space in the upper portion of the canvas enough to balance the weight of the bottom plane."