Louisa Chase: The Eighties
Berry Campbell Gallery,24 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through May 30
I saw Louisa Chase’s massive “Sunset Grip” (1983), with its mostly soft Monet-esque color and nearly rabid mark-making, through a window on 26th Street and thought, Okay, fine. You’ve got me. As a viewer, one can sometimes forget that painting is a very physical act. Not so with Chase. In her works, the words “stroke,” “carve,” “slash,” and “gouge” each take on a distinctive meaning as well as mark. Chase was a main figure of 1970s and ’80s New York, running around with the likes of Marilyn Minter, Judy Pfaff, and Julian Schnabel, and a mentee of Philip Guston, whose work is also on view in the city in a show John Yau will tell you all about below. This is the largest and most comprehensive showing of her work in more than a quarter-century, and it just might stop you in your tracks.
—Lisa Yin Zhang
May 2, 2026
