Artists Josh Sperling and Sam Friedman Share a Friendship and a Vibrant Two-Man Show

New York-based artists Josh Sperling and Sam Friedman are lifelong friends; both are drawn to bold patterns, experimental compositions, and geometric shapes that generate an illusionary depth. “From the Cradle to the Grave” features a collection of recent works by both artists, smartly curated for Joshua Liner Gallery.

Sperling and Friedman are both concerned with the mechanical and technical aspects of making paintings, but employ their abilities to different, distinct ends. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly—which is to say color field painting and post-painterly abstraction—Sperling breaks free from the confines of a traditional canvas shape by slicing stretched canvas into wavy lines and interlocking curved parts, sometimes stacking segments on top of each other to achieve a dynamic, sculptural effect. Friedman uses exacting lines and graphic shapes to develop acrylic paintings that could be mistaken for images that are created digitally. His flat planes of paint and color are visually stimulating and evoke emotion.

In Sperling’s From Now to the Eons of Oblivion (2015), 73 colorful squiggles are mounted on a white wall, loosely hovering together to form a rectangle. In contrast with the cheerful, maximalist force of this work is the uniformly white Searching for Heaven (2015), which subscribes to a minimalist aesthetic. It features contoured, half-moon slivers that are constructed on canvas over wooden plinths and raised in parts to accentuate light and shadow. The pieces stretch vertically like a fortified tower or totem pole devoid of cultural symbols.

Sperling’s humorous work Pissing in the Wind (2015) shows a wavy yellow line bisecting red, pink, and beige colored shapes; its name suggests that the line is a stream of the bodily fluid. This same central form sheds its representational associations in Untitled (Squiggle - 1301) (2013), where the same yellow squiggle appears, but this time it’s isolated, without any background colors and angular shapes to detract from it, a wall sculpture in high relief. 

Sam Friedman’s works are not so much cheerful and jocular, but rather, somewhat enigmatic. Oscillating between a monochromatic palette and a vibrant, colorful one, his works evidence a drastically different practice, and an affinity for organic subject matter. Some of the pieces on display look like digital collages, mixing textures and patterns, as in his untitled series of acrylics, executed in black, white, and shades of gray. Often these works are landscapes pictured by moonlight—bright orbs in a night sky with trees and fields, interrupted by wispy plants or blades of grass. 

These works are executed with great precision, with crisp stripes and swathes of paint. Some of his other works are more abstract in nature, yet slightly recall cells. And Friedman’s color works, also untitled, more strongly resemble cells, like a cross section of cellular matter under a microscope, in varying psychedelic colors. These works, perhaps, contrast best with those of Sperling.