To begin the gallery's second season, we are presenting our first two-person exhibition, featuring work by Robin Dash and Michelle Grabner, two painters who take the ideas of modern abstraction as their jumping off point, creating work that we've been thinking of as "Informal Formalism." The work of each artist is very different; in pairing the two, we hope to generate conversation about the ways in which their work intersects and diverges -- including on the topics of abstraction, pattern and decoration, and the politics of domesticity and homeliness.

We are proud to be presenting the first Boston area exhibition of paintings by Michelle Grabner, who lives and works in Chicago, and whose paintings have been exhibited to critical acclaim in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London. Grabner applies slim pastel bands of color to her canvases, creating works that relate visually to the pale, regular marks of Agnes Martin or Robert Irwin. In Grabner's case, however, the slight sway of her lines and soft texture of her materials give away the humble origins of her abstract motifs -- not the mechanistic lines of minimalism, but the commercial weave of domestic patterns found in baby blankets and dish towels, painstakingly rendered by hand. In addition, Grabner will be creating a site-specific, flocked wall painting at the gallery -- using flocking, which is traditionally associated with wallpaper and decorative patterns rather than with fine art, Grabner continues her inquiry into the relationship of the humble to the grand, of the domestic to the universal, and of the process of art-making to the art object itself.

Boston-based painter Robin Dash reexamines the theoretical underpinnings of modern abstraction in her own slyly heretical way. She paints on modestly-sized canvases, establishing strong-hued color fields and solid forms as if setting the stage for traditional abstract painting -- but then her hard-edged shapes seem to take on a life of their own, mutating into cartoon figures and suggestive peep-holes. A Jungian collection of lima beans, internal organs, and mosaic patio tiles appears to be trying to form narratives. The personal life of the artist seeps into the canvas -- and it is meticulously personal -- a simple, very contemporary acceptance of the banality and the enormity of the deeply personal.

ALLSTON SKIRT GALLERY is located at 129 Braintree Street in Allston, second floor, near Able Rug and the Sports Depot. We are open Wednesday through Saturday, from noon - 5 p.m., and by appointment. For more information, please call Randi Hopkins or Beth Kantrowitz at 617-254-7027.

Visit our website at: www.allstonskirt.com

Robin Dash acknowledges The Artists' Resource Trust Fund, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation for its generous support of her work.