NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Suzanne Caporael. Book Eight, the artist’s eighth exhibition at the gallery, will open on 18 February at 520 West 21st Street and will remain on view through 27 March 2021. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by art historian and philosopher David Carrier.

In Book Eight, Caporael continues her profound exploration of the nature of color, surface, and aesthetics. Her calm, yet invigorating paintings, composed of multiple veiled layers of oil paint, employ an aesthetic inherent to the experience of the real world. The artist’s ongoing investigation of rich colors, decisive placement of shapes, and juxtaposing forms makes Book Eight endlessly inventive.

The multiplicity of subjects in Caporael’s recent paintings are a departure from her previous focus on a particular subject or theme. Created under the staggering weight of current events, the paintings became a visual polyphony - an unshaped narrative of transient efforts to hold onto a thought long enough to paint it. Rather than developing variations on a single theme, the body of Caporael’s paintings reveals a certain flair and grace - a play of variations that are not rule-governed. What joins them as a group is the highly distinctive method and style that revives one’s interest in the aesthetics of art.

David Carrier addresses the abstractions of ordinary objects in her work: “Just as it’s hard sometimes to discriminate between nature and man-made landscapes, it’s difficult to distinguish between Caporael’s abstractions and her figurative images.” In this fashion, the act of observation is an essential part of the process as Caporael consciously leaves interpretation up to the viewer.

Traditionally, aesthetic experience involves focusing on an individual artifact, and looking closely at that unique artwork. In Book Eight, Caporael asks that we compare and contrast a body of works—for only by seeing these distinct and diverse, but related and highly evocative images can we fully appreciate the individual artworks.