Municipal Bonds is pleased to present Toward Orphism—a trio exhibition on view March 15–April 26 in the gallery’s annex—considering Orphism’s legacy in contemporary abstraction. Coined in the early 20th century, the term describes a movement that expanded Cubism’s geometric foundations, emphasizing color, rhythm, and optical vibration. This sensibility continues in the work of Austin Thomas, Blaise Rosenthal, and Zaida Oenema, who each approach abstraction through material, structure, and the cadence of form.
Austin Thomas draws from the city’s architecture and kinetic energy, creating monotypes that balance structure and spontaneity. Forms coalesce into layered, interlocking compositions, distilling urbanity into intuitive order. Blaise Rosenthal’s paintings develop through shifts in tone, texture, and repetition. His restrained framework allows surfaces to register subtle variations of mass and depth—while atmosphere and material take precedence. Zaida Oenema treats paper as both surface and structure, incising delicate geometries with a soldering iron. Her reliefs hover between presence and absence, mapping the natural world at the edge of perception.
More inclination than ideology, Toward Orphism considers how abstraction builds through contrast and accumulation, where material decisions guide form toward a sense of motion and dimension. It looks at how structure holds and transforms, how geometry bends toward movement, and how process asserts itself over time. Thomas, Rosenthal, and Oenema work within abstraction’s evolving language, drawing from Orphism’s pursuit of dynamic equilibrium without resolution.
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