Charline von Heyl
Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York
The most exciting American painter right now is the German Charline von Heyl. The evidence, seventeen bristling canvases, hangs at the Petzel gallery until Oct. 20, both a tour de force and a teaser: her mid-career survey opens at the Hirshhorn Museum on Nov. 8. Von Heyl finds a future for painting by digging into its past, from the angst of Otto Dix to the ornament of Philip Taaffe. The vibrating periwinkle circles of “Mana Hatta”—its title is a riff on the original name for her adopted home town of New York City and a poem by Walt Whitman—are swiped from Sonia Delauney. The polka-dot hares on the south side of the picture remind the eye that each painter is an Alice, falling through her own rabbit hole. (Petzel; Through Oct. 20.)