Known for fashioning sheets of oil paint into sculptural forms or collaging oil skins into 2-D works, Leslie Wayne turns her medium in a new direction with curiously-shaped canvases at Jack Shainman Gallery. Tall, narrow panels 7 feet high and less than 2 feet wide with names like ‘Rush,’ ‘Summer Slope’ and ‘Low Tide,’ at times suggest core samples of the earth and are accompanied by another series of realist paintings featuring aerial views of the landscape set in special frames that mimic airplane windows. Titled ‘This Land’ after Woody Guthrie’s classic folk song, the show was inspired by Wayne’s 2021 flight across the Western US and offers views of the landscape, distant or abstracted, that step away from divisions and conflict represented by place. (On view in Chelsea through August 2nd).
