A relatively new stream of curatorial gymnastics, in which legendary art exhibitions are either re-created or reimagined in today’s terms, is currently afoot in New York.

On my way to meet a friend at a Nolita café last Saturday, I was drawn into the Frosch & Portman gallery, on Stanton Street, by a series of small, colorful, dimensional paintings on the back wall.

These four works by Richard Allen Morris (above, left and below) are part of an exhibition called Eccentric Abstraction, which also includes works by Douglas Florian, David Hayward, Leslie Wayne, Mamie Holst, and Bill Weiss (bottom row), who curated the show.

Weiss’s inspiration was a 1966 exhibition curated by Lucy Lippard, at Fischbach Gallery in New York that explored the opposite of an austere formalism in abstract painting that emerged after World War !!. Using the same elements of grids, planar divisions, geometric or gestural shapes employed by artists such as Mark Rothko and Hans Hoffman, this work arose from different impulses, and achieved ends that are more personal, expressive, and at times, embraced the spontaneous and even the irrational. Among the artists presented in the 1966 show were Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman.

True to the original show, the pieces currently on view combine unusual, seemingly soft and pliable materials. Some borrow the modular, repetitive compositions typical of Minimalism, but many also exploit more relaxed and open structures. Combining highly personal and sensuous qualities, some of these pieces are inspired by themes taken from Surrealism, Dada and Expressionism. The show offers a refreshing view of work being done today that builds upon historic examples with energy and excitement.

Eccentric Abstraction 2014, on view through August 3 at Frosch & Portman, 53 Stanton Street, NY, NY.

Also see:
The Photographic Object, 1970, an ambitious historical exhibition exploring the legacy of Peter Bunnell’s landmark 1970 show ‘Photography into Sculpture’, presented at the The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, NY, NY. Information.
Other Primary Structures, at the Jewish Museum, a re-creation of the 1966 exhibition of that title, presenting work by contemporary international artists whose work "might have been included" in the original show. NY Times.