This week’s gallery picks present the balance of whimsy and precision expressed in lush color.

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1. Robin Rhode’s Breaking Waves, whimsically depicts a young boy surfing in the sea. The illusionistic swell of the waves–articulated by Rhode’s drawn gestures onto a dilapidated city wall–reiterates the boy’s deft maneuvering of the ocean and this type of athletic physicality is echoed in the accompanying wall drawing at The Drawing Center
2. Rhythmic and lyrical, with a combination of pre-ordained structure and improvisation inspired in part by his love of jazz, Stanley Whitney’s square-format paintings are arranged rectangles of vivid, single colors in a deliberately irregular grid, with the close-fitting, many-hued “bricks” or “tiles” stacked vertically and arrayed in horizontal bands in Dance the Orange at Studio Museum Harlem
3. In Plane Figures, artists working in Argentina, Peru, and Chicago are brought together by a shared interest in abstraction as a phenomenological, first-person experience of painting’s two-dimensional plane. In a selection of works that engage the history of geometric abstraction and op art, the artists boldly manipulate or violate the conventions of these styles in visceral ways at The Mission Projects
4. James Kennedy’s abstract paintings feature intricate, completely knitted surfaces that rely structurally on a buoyant tension of line, form, texture, and tonality. Despite the precision of his works, which contributes to their measured and harmonious gestalt, Kennedy’s process is unpremeditated; he does not create preliminary drawings, nor does he make use of referential material at Dolby Chadwick Gallery
5. Vera Paints a Rainbow showcases Vera Neumann’s use of color as means to express emotions through compositions characterized by a colorful palette. The works on view, organized following the rainbow spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet—emphasize Neumann’s rich use of color, which in her words, “is a marvelous way of expressing emotion.” at Alexander Gray
6.  In response to the complex and elusive nature of color, Maureen McQuillan has created her own chromatic system, one that is both orderly, but also one that would “heat up, break down and short circuit itself in no time.”  at McKenzie Fine Art