Matthew Metzger “Gray,” 2021, acrylic on linen, 37.5 x 29.875 inches Courtesy of the artist and Regards, Chicago

The first thing one might notice about the current show at Grant Wahlquist Gallery, “Quartet (or, A Basket of Roses),” through Aug. 19, is its elegance. Mostly works are in black and white and gray, which gives the overall atmosphere a certain chic and sophistication.

Yet, as we begin to take in individual pieces by the four artists featured – Matthew Metzger, Abbey Williams, Joe Mama-Nitzberg and Tad Beck – we become aware of many levels of meaning that weave through the show. The dominant connection among them is the relationship of sight and sound and the way the artists use them to explore the idea of abstraction.

Three “Gray” paintings by Metzger are materially gorgeous. They are meant to resemble ester foam, an acoustic panel used to absorb sound. But Metzger’s art is never quite what it seems. Here, the oblique reference to one material actually succeeds in evoking something else much more profound. Their effect is achieved with charcoal gray acrylic paint sprinkled with some sort of fine glittery substance, evoking an immersion in deep, starry space.

Matthew Metzger, “On Holiday,” 2021, acrylic and oil on linen, two aluminum c-stands, and crossbar, ~92 x 138 x 30.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and Regards, Chicago

They also present a dichotomy. We often think of black as absence of light, a void and an emptiness. Yet the material presence of these “Gray” paintings is undeniable and almost confrontational. Confrontational in what way, you might ask? By considering a fourth painting, “On Holiday,” we can surmise that it has something to do with race. The title implies a lighthearted, easy pastime. But it actually refers to Billie Holiday, and it is inspired by a closeup photo Metzger took of grass growing on the singer’s grave. It hangs like photo seamless paper from a crossbar suspended on aluminum stands.

The original exhibition of this painting caused a stir, as people conflated its hanging in midair with Holiday’s famous song “Strange Fruit,” which is about lynching. Metzger has since hung the painting so that it touches the ground to avoid this connotation. But the very fact that Holiday’s presence and life is being invoked does beg the question of what sort of blackness we’re talking about in the “Gray” paintings. Does it matter? Yes and no, depending on how much we want to read into them and discover meaning. Their physicality alone, however, feels rich with depth in itself.

Joe Mama-Nitzberg, “Untitled (Power),” 2008, acrylic on canvas, 39 x 39 inches Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

A little-known fact about Joe Mama-Nitzberg is that for many years he was creative director at Geffen, Interscope and Arista (something he talked about in a 2019 interview in the magazine The Collaborative). Once we understand this, the grisaille painting “Untitled (Power)” makes complete sense in that it uses a detail from the cover for the band New Order’s album “Power, Corruption & Lies,” featuring a modular color-coded alphabet in the upper right corner.

The story behind this cover is that its designer, Peter Saville, wanted to use a detail from Henri Fantin-Latour’s painting “A Basket of Roses” (hence that part of the exhibition’s name) to imply that flowers – with their scents and colors – were seductive, just like power, corruption and lies can be seductive in themselves as well as ways of seducing people into morally questionable actions and thoughts. Britain’s National Gallery initially turned Saville’s request down, withholding publication rights. After inquiries, the record label discovered it was owned by the National Heritage Trust, which belonged to the people of Britain. So, permission was granted for its use, and Saville added the color-coded alphabet, which functioned as a kind of legend to decode the painting in all its seductive (and perhaps misleading), agenda-pregnant lushness.

Mama-Nitzberg instead appropriates the imagery in grayscale, perhaps implying the complexity of power, corruption and lies in which things cannot be pinned down as either black or white, but exist in a far more ambiguous, indecipherable in-between. What he is referring to specifically is unclear, but by 2008, the date of the work, George W. Bush controversies were rampant – from Dick Cheney’s dark backstage machinations and the abuses of Abu Ghraib, to the Enron scandal and the president’s backing of the ban on constitutional same-sex marriage. Whether this is substantively true is less relevant than the way musical allusion combines with abstract art to comment on larger issues beyond what may be most apparent on the surface.

Joe Mama-Nitzberg, “Untitled (GI),” 2008, acrylic on canvas, 39 x 39 inches Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

“Untitled (GI)” seems to tackle other themes in a similar way. In this case he appropriates an image from hardcore punk rock band the Germs’ album “GI.” Mama-Nitzberg was good friends with Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Courtney Love. Both Cobain and the Germs’ vocalist Darby Crash, who designed the cover the artist is using, died by suicide. We can’t be entirely certain, but there could be a plausible relation between this subject and the image of a circle within a black field, which might evoke a portal into the void.

In the appropriation of imagery, a recurrent theme in Mama-Nitzberg’s work, he is also proffering a slew of questions to contemplate: Where is the line between graphic and “fine” art? Is commercialized Pop imagery still relevant as a transmission of culture? Who “owns” cultural imagery?

Abbey Williams, “Let’s Travel in the Congo p. 46 (gem series),” 2021, framed vintage travel guide book page, 22.75 x 17.75 inches Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters, New York

It is reductive and insufficient to say that Abbey Williams reframes Blackness in her art. But works like “Let’s Travel in the Congo, page 46 (gem series)” literally does that. The works in this series crop into images of Black skin taken from a travel book and then frame them with wide white mattes and black borders. The effect is a closeup look at Blackness as something precious, a small “gem” given a character of veneration through the way in which it is framed.

But as these works focus on a single subject, a video like “Natural Sound” encompasses a far-ranging array of topics. We see hands flipping through pages of a book showing astonishing natural landscapes. At some point, these hands are dipped in a black substance (ink or paint I believe) and, as they flip through the book, they begin to sully the pages and partially obscure the topographies. At another point, a killer whale breaks the surface of the water, pushing along her dead calf in her mouth, while at another point a whale mother and calf swim together in the open ocean.

We can glean more and more meaning with each viewing. My first impression was that it functioned as a kind of admonishment about the environmental peril humans have wrought. But the whale imagery also speaks of the joy, wonder and pain of motherhood (which could also be seen as congruent with the ecological message when we think of nature as Mother). There is much poignancy here in the collaged imagery and sound.

Abbey Williams, “Reprise,” 2021, digital video, color, with sound TRT 6:49, Ed. 1 of 5 + 2 AP Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

Williams’s ”Reprise” deals more with Blackness. It superimposes views of starry galaxies over aspirational images of interiors and bachelorette parties – attended only by white women – from Life magazine, creating a juxtaposition of idealized shallowness of the Life images with the infinite depth and potential of blackness and Blackness. But here, too, Williams brings in themes of motherhood in the sense of creation, specifically the creation of art (Nina Simone’s hands playing the piano, for instance, or a woman emerging from under a flowering tree asking the question, “You think you’re so creative?”).

Tad Beck, “Winslow Homer Studio-09.25.20 AM, 2020,” framed archival inkjet print, 24 x 24 inches (sheet); 26.5 x 26.5 (framed), unique Courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

Finally, there are the works of Tad Beck, all from the “Blanks” series. The title here is deliberately misleading in that the spaces Beck creates through re-photography are anything but blank. They are inspired by composer Alvin Lucier’s nearly hourlong 1969 art piece “I am Sitting in a Room,” which Lucier described this way:

“I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”

Beck does this visually by taking a picture of a room’s ambient reflections on a blank piece of photo paper, then setting the resulting photo in front of a camera as it picks up other reflections and rephotographing it. Over time and repetition of this process, an entirely new, abstract room architecture results in a “Blank.” We see ghostly images of windows, walls, light and other architectural features and phenomena, but they are overlayed on top of each other, fusing time and space throughout a day and thereby confusing the eye into letting go of its need to decipher a specific image, capture time in a moment or fix any “truth” in one place.