Gudrun Mertes-Frady was the second artist profile I wrote for this site in June of 1999 (back when Artist Profiles were still included). In my experience with her paintings they have always engaged the grid as subject matter.  As noted in my review of her solo show in 2003 at Rosenberg + Kaufman her work has gradually shifted from a splashy painterliness to the current hard-edge skeined approach.  In some ways this work continues to engage the rectilinear order and structure with some attention paid to surface.  You see it in the overall patterning of the linear elements which often bear comparison to a Brice Marden treatment. But the real departure for this work is when the paintings explode the grid as happens with Singular Light.  While the disconnect between the background surfaces and the linear forms has continued and succeeds in establishing a post-modernist coolness, I nevertheless miss the messy emotional, painterly qualities Mertes-Frady so excellently employed in her earlier paintings.

Gudrun Mertes-Frady, Kind of Blue, 2006, oil and metallic pigment on canvas, 30 x 31 in

Gudrun Mertes-Frady, Singular Light, 2006, oil and metallic pigment on canvas, 68 x 72 in

Gudrun Mertes-Frady, Downtown, 2007, oil and metallic pigment on canvas, 68 x 72 in