05/05/2026
RECURRENT MEASURES
SUZANNE SONG
May 14 – August 22, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14th, 5-8PM
The Williamsburg Biannual and Gallery Baton are pleased to present "Recurrent Measures," a solo exhibition by Suzanne Song, featuring a new body of pumice paintings, shaped canvases, and two site-specific installations.
“Recurrent Measures brings together works that return to one another across my practice,” Song explains. “Ideas reappear in different forms, and the development is not linear. The exhibition follows these repeated adjustments.”
Since 2011, the pumice series has been an iterative exploration of space, materiality, surface, and edge. By building the surface with coarse pumice medium, Song sets a real shadow against a painted one. The two never quite align. A limited monochromatic palette focuses attention on compositions that quietly fold, unfold, shift, and remain unfixed.
The exhibition unfolds across multiple levels. From the entry, visitors first encounter both installations from afar: Intercession, a window piece in which Song’s pleat-like forms engage the transparent and reflective qualities of glass under changing light, and Blank, a trompe-l’œil installation on the lower level that alternately reads as two and three dimensional. Inside, Bends, a large painting of two opposing forms created over three years (2020–2023), anchors the exhibition, while earlier formative works are presented in the upper-level gallery.
Visually reminiscent of Op Art and Minimalism but rooted in trompe-l’œil, Song’s work poses a basic question: Is seeing really knowing? The inquiry echoes George Berkeley’s esse est percipi and John Berger’s assertion in Ways of Seeing that “seeing comes before words.”
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