THERE’S AN ARCHITECTURAL QUALITY to the drawings and paintings of Jason Karolak, one of the two artists showing in PFA Gallery’s “Throughlines.” The broken lines of some of the Brooklyn artist’s minimalist drawings, made with pencil that’s partially overlaid with ink, suggest floor plans for imaginary buildings. That may be intentional, since Karolak’s interests include “utopian architecture and communal societies,” according to PFA’s biographical note.
The three Karolak paintings in this selection are as dense and dark as the drawings are open and mostly white. The pictures are loosely painted, yet from a distance their shapes appear precise. Atop the multi-layered compositions are pseudo-diagrammatic lines similar to those in the drawings, rendered in lighter colors. They suggest unreadable neon signs blazing on darkened streets, or portals into the darkness. The effect may not conjure utopia, but the sketchy forms do seem archetypal.
The show’s other contributor is Ara Koh, a Seoul-born local ceramicist. Her stoneware pieces are rough rectangles made of tangled tendrils, always in glistening shades of a single color. The serpentine curls appear organic, yet are pressed into near-geometric forms that indicate human intervention. The artist’s titles, which include “Gnarly Magic” and “Blue Glazed,” tend to refer only to the sculptures’s visual aspects. Yet the coiling energy of Koh’s style has metaphysical implications: The surging clay filaments seem to embody an unyielding life force.
