01 Jun 2017

Gray Matters

Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University

Reviewed by Sarah Rose Sharp

The experience of being a woman is not corporeal. Though many sex characteristics present through our bodily forms, women are also simply people. Oftentimes, exclusively female art exhibitions overlook this detail.

Not so with "Gray Matters." The debut exhibition from Michael Goodson as Senior Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts features 37 female artists working with the practice of grisaille. With the exception of one video, there are no female bodies on display, and only a handful of works that even feature faces. The rest are stunning formal compositions across a multitude of media, showcasing an inclusive range of established, mid-career, and emerging artists.

The shades of gray are dizzying and thrilling, demonstrating the complexity of female consciousness. Aside from the aesthetic triumphs of the exhibition, it is refreshing to see women valued for the life of their minds over the functions of their bodies - for their gray matter, one might say.