Lily Stockman

Johanna Fateman, The New Yorker, 11 November 2022

Curvilinear symmetries and an Easter-egg palette (albeit one with a twist) lend this Los Angeles painter's new canvases a delphic allure. Stockman's compositions are both diagrammatic and vaporous, a combination that calls to mind the spiritualist abstractions of the American modernist Agnes Pelton. Although they're more lyrical, Stockman's nested shapes also have some of the meticulous magic of Josef Albers's squares. In the five-foot-tall painting "Trumpet Vine," a central geometric motif-a cross between a keyhole and an envelope-is delineated in sunrise hues, perhaps marking the entrance to a cloud. "Murano Mirror" has a strange, almost confectionary beauty, its largely pale-pink forms unsettled at the bottom edge by a strip of dark coral. At times, Stockman leaves the impression of her brush's bristles visible in the oil-a hairy, slightly agitated effect that keeps the radiant work from getting too pretty.