Cora Cohen - A Decade: 2012-22 - Greene Naftali - ***.5

Like water from the stone of abstract modernism, these manage to be good in spite of everything, particularly Wind in Pines and Terrain Vague, both of which use watercolor as a means for tonal layering that's like a far less restrained version of color field staining. They're all pretty good though, even shockingly so considering how bland gimmick-free abstraction tends to be these days. There's a strange quality in her approach that makes it feel as though this could have been painted by a much younger artist, and it certainly doesn't self-evidently suggest the work of a septuagenarian. It's weird because I don't know why, but the post-historical provisional approach to painting that looks to reinvest a sense of meaning through materiality and an avoidance of reference feels uniquely contemporary. I don't associate that with older artists because they tend to reveal the baggage of their historical referents and the era when they came of age, but she somehow doesn't reveal any of that. I like these quite a bit, but there's a self-conscious lack of specificity that holds me back from outright enthusiasm