Ilana Napoli reviews Images and Notes from the Floating World, works by Tyler Wilkinson & Claes Gabriel recently on view at University City Arts League, Philadelphia.

Napoli writes that “both [artists] describe their relationships with painting as a physical experience. For Claes, painting is a fight. He refers to his sculptural paintings, which evoke totems and often have eyes and mouths, as ‘she’ and ‘he,’ and converses with them in the studio. It’s a struggle against the material’s original form, especially when using found objects, and a surrender to the process… Tyler, however, who makes figurative works as well as gestural abstractions, calls painting a dance. His aim is harmony, … he has an idea for the piece in his head, and tries to adjust his physical performance to inch as close as he can to the ideal concept.”