Futurist Painting with 15 (large and small) Boxes 1971

Joyce Kozloff’s ‘Futurist Painting with 15 (large and small) Boxes’ is made of many squares – perhaps in acrylic or gouache - where lines emerge and dissolve. The first thing I notice is the surface quality; it's not trying to hide its own making. The brushstrokes are visible, almost like the painting is breathing. I'm drawn to the box with the blue-green hues and the creamy white stripe. It feels like an abstract landscape—a horizon line, perhaps? And the layering of colours! Kozloff isn't afraid to let the underpainting peek through, creating a sense of depth and history. Kozloff's work shares some kinship with that of Agnes Martin, in their shared geometric abstraction, but where Martin's lines suggest an ethereal lightness, Kozloff's forms are more grounded. Both artists create paintings as a record of a process. It is this ongoing conversation, this back-and-forth, that makes art so exciting. There is no right or wrong way to experience a painting, only endless possibilities.