NO ROOM FOR DOUBT | Alain Biltereyst, Britta Bogers, Gerd Borkelmann, Marelene Frost, Franziska Holstein, Christian Hutzinger, Dorothee Joachim, Christopher Michlig, Gary Stephan, Caleb Taylor and Allison Wade | February 3 – March 9, 2024

“(No) Room for Doubt” on view at Devening Projects, then, is aptly titled. Covering a fifteen-year period (sixty if you consider the lone work by Marlene Frost), the pieces in this show constitute a choice survey of contemporary approaches to minimalism. American and European artists Alain Biltereyst, Britta Bogers, Gerd Borkelmann, Franziska Holstein, Christian Hutzinger, Dorothee Joachim, Christopher Michlig, Gary Stephan, Caleb Taylor and Allison Wade, each explore their medium’s potential perched at the perceivable limits of representation. — Alan Pocaro, New City, February 23, 2024

Visit Devening Projects and you will find — supported by the often invisible yet ever-present grid — distinct, measurable forms. Think: edges. But look closer and you’ll discover the more-than-geometric is, in many works, integral. A detailed record of scarring, burnishments, painterly washes, and minuscule drips belie the stayed compositions of Alain Biltereyst. The fringe of Allison Wade’s hand-dyed denim makes her pieces as much about unraveling as the fold and cut. Appearing illuminated by light not of the room in which they hang, Dorothee Joachim’s monochromes are particularly deceiving. Their only embellishments are irregular perimeters where driblets of water and pigment once clung.
— Curtis Anthony Bozif, Chicago Reader, February 20, 2024

As the exhibition release rightly notes, narrative and surreal forms of figuration, with their almost hermetic emphasis on the personal histories and identities of their makers, have been ascendant for a number of years. That’s not a bad thing. In a decade where art galleries, art schools, and even art museums are closing, it’s hard not to think that sixty years of asking viewers to see significance in the suspect is at least partly to blame. Maybe an art that is closer to the experience of the people is what the moment calls for. But for those still after a universal visual value, artists and viewers alike, it’s reassuring to know that some rooms are still wide open. — Alan Pocaro, New City, February 23, 2024