SUZANNE CAPORAEL: Fitting

Suzanne Caporael's tenth solo exhibition with the Miles McEnery Gallery, _Fitting_, demonstrates an ongoing interest in the visual manifestation of theoretical concepts. In this series, using the four-color theorem of cartography, the artist fits polyomino shapes into one another. Tertiary colors describe their adjacency and boundaries within the image as a whole. These shapes serve as an organizational syntax, forming a constructive proof that explores the tension between rigid systems and the fluidity of perception. As these polyominoes interlock and tessellate across the canvas, their boundary edges are softened by xCaporael's signature paint handling; the multiple semi-opaque layers merge to create a uniquely textured surface that recapitulates the receptive nature of the linen beneath. Susan Tallman, in her essay "NP-Complete," notes that in addition to mathematical and statistical physics, polyominoes are also used in games. "Games play out in time; paintings play out in space. But the pleasure of a good game move offers isn't really about the game. It lies in the sudden awareness of an opportunity you hadn't seen a moment ago, and the chain of new options that unfurl from that realization. The images in Caporael's paintings are fixed, yet somehow they carry the whiff of that wide open universe of permutational possibility." The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated printed catalog with an essay by art historian and author Susan Tallman.