"Jane Springwater: Parallax" March 8 - April 26, 2025

Municipal Bonds is pleased to present "Parallax," an exhibition of new and recent works by Jane Springwater, on view March 8–April 26, 2025. This marks the San Francisco-based artist’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery, following her celebrated duo show last year.

Named for the optical phenomenon in which an object appears to shift depending on one’s vantage point, "Parallax" explores how repetition, structure, and variation shape perception. Across Springwater’s drawings and prints, precision and fluidity meet as forms expand, contract, and subtly realign. Working exclusively with ink on paper, she constructs intricate sequences of hand-drawn marks: some bound to geometric systems, others developing through organic motifs. Repetition provides both stability and transformation—grids offer a structural foundation, while shifts in density and placement generate an underlying sense of movement. As Springwater describes, “I devise rule-based systems to make works that are both highly ordered and free flowing.”Her compositions unfold through sustained concentration, accumulating over time into forms that are at once measured and evolving. In works from her Decelerating series, she establishes a glyph-like mark within a structured grid, using numbering systems and diagrams to determine placement, orientation, and layering. Other series, including In Motion and Between the Lines, develop with greater fluidity, adjusting balance and form in real-time. While these systems guide her process, she remains attuned to how each mark influences the whole—responding to what is already present while maintaining a sense of continuity.

This exhibition brings together works ranging from tightly structured compositions to forms that drift and intertwine, creating networks of density and openness. Value shifts generate gradients of light and dark; while in other works, patterns disperse, and structure gives way to open space. Seen from a distance, they appear as tonal fields, their surfaces subtly shifting. Up close, individual marks emerge, revealing intricate layers—Springwater likens this to “an image coming into focus under a microscope.” Springwater's process is one of construction and refinement, where rhythm develops through repetition and the interplay of precision and variation. The eye moves between density and spaciousness, registering form as something continuously reshaped. Small gestures accumulate into larger patterns, generating momentum that feels both deliberate and expansive. Internal logic informs the work, yet the structure remains responsive to changes in balance and form. While not explicitly referencing natural forces, Springwater's works suggest an inherent sense of motion and accumulation—forms responding to their own growth and variations in density. “I am interested in how the smallest actions build into something larger and interconnected, how structure and spontaneity coexist, and how perception continuously shifts,” she explains. In this way, "Parallax" reflects not only a perceptual phenomenon but a conceptual one: a way of seeing that is never fixed but always in flux. As light, distance, and attention shift, so too does the work—its structure responsive, its rhythms shaped by both intention and change.

"Toward Orphism: Austin Thomas, Blaise Rosenthal, Zaida Oenema" March 15 - April 26, 2025

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.

Images:

Jane Springwater, Timed Exposure, 2024

Blaise Rosenthal, A Far Country, 2020