Ian Woo describes his abstract paintings as “alchemical.” Elements of the picture “come together, they separate, with parts forming shapes and things,” as a result of which, he observes, “often the materiality changes, affecting the translucency of the paintings.” His latest solo outing, at FOST Gallery, was a spare, sublime affair that lent the white cube space an almost ecclesiastical atmosphere, in which the haptic complexity of his visual language was foregrounded to its best advantage.

“Joy of a preverbal dispenser” was testament to the fact that Woo’s practice has remained consistent, and consistently interesting. The pictorial syntax that has come to characterize his particular brand of painterly abstraction was evident: the tactility of the brushwork; the irregular mosaic composition of zones of color or texture, recalling the appearance of inlaid tiles; the use of linear, lattice-like patterns as a motif; and the chromatic repertoire, the shimmering palettes that render the best of his painted works pulsating, effulgent presences. The latter phenomenon was an especially beguiling aspect of the show. One of the first pieces to greet the visitor was The good, the bad and the ugly (all works 2019), a painting that sports the complexion of ripe fruit, the rich, ambrosial orange-red of persimmons or tangerines that makes the mouth water. One was put in mind of the enchanted fruit in Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market,” or the luscious, saturated yellows and reds of Ming porcelain. Facing it was the similarly hefty Bridge, the glowing, corn-colored accents of which stood out against its companion shades of grays and browns like nuggets of gold peeking through a crust of rock. Coil Flux is a luminous web of ochre, amber, gold and cream tones that articulate a range of textural effects, with colors and shapes shifting and morphing before the viewer’s gaze. Thick, gestural licks of paint glide past swathes of soft, dilute wash; a long, arced brushstroke leads the eye into a layered chromatic field, the undertones of which emerge into burnished shades of yellow and gold that echo flickering accents elsewhere in the painting, partially obscured beneath more dominant hues.

However compelling the individual objects, the star of the show was undoubtedly the lyrical use of space. The presentation exuded a carefully orchestrated rhythm that unfurled over the labyrinthine flow of white walls like a tempo rubato. The imagined beat accelerated with the close spatial conversation of works in certain spots, or slowed down in others into a measured refrain, the gallery’s architectural contours punctuated at deliberate points by the art. The unhurried cadences of the display served to amplify the hallowed hush of the white cube, making of the viewing experience a quasi-religious occasion. For instance, Fringe and As of Nature were positioned at the end of structural passageways, and the viewer encountered these in the manner of moving down the nave of a church to gaze upon an icon, or perhaps a tableau of stained glass. A recessed area next to the entrance was utilized to house a solitary piece, Finder (2019), lending it an aura, almost, of sacrosanctity. One was reminded of art critic Brian O’Doherty’s remark that a “gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church . . . Art exists in a kind of eternity of display.”

The joy of an Ian Woo show is to be found in the sensuous, even sensual optical pleasures that it offers. Here, those pleasures—chromatic and haptic, formal and material—were intensified by the aesthetic logic of the white cube. If the white cube contextualizes the work of art as an object existing beyond the contingencies of the exterior world, much like the transcendence of spiritual experience, then perhaps here is the gaze itself, the act of looking, a gesture of supplication, an expression of desire for the divine.