Allegory and the mise-en-scène are two longtime preoccupations for artist Mary Simpson. For her first New York solo exhibition, at Rachel Uffner, Simpson continues her practice of working fluidly between genres, engaging these two modes. Zen-like films projected side-by-side introduce the show-one of slow-moving shots of Jasper Johns’s garden, the other of a piano being tuned for a John Cage performance. A series of abstract paintings, most combining soft washes of color and vaguely linear elements, occupy the large, sunlit downstairs gallery, along with one photography-based installation. An earlier text by Simpson elucidates the folkloric thread running through the show: “The allegorist arrives at symbol through intuition. She tends toward the mythological and psychological resonance of a landscape, a ruin, a surface.”
Pictured: View of Mary Simpson’s exhibition “Off Hours,” 2015; at Rachel Uffner.