David Humphrey’s Fall 2014 show at Fredericks & Freiser, who are affording him a solo spot on their Frieze stand this year, was titled “Work and Play”. For anyone who has ever wondered why painters work and musicians play, this was a great title for Humphrey, a practitioner of both arts. “Under The Table” is an essay in overlapping and interweaving textures, temperatures and intensities. Deliberative, illustrative, tightly sexy delineations keep company with brushstrokes of sloppy-joe sensuality, as if R. B. Kitaj has been caught doodling on a de Kooning. Just as a couple slyly holds hands under the titular table, so the deconstructive overload of opposing gestural intentions – matt versus gush, drip versus coagulation – subtly coheres into compositional discipline and thematic focus. Think Albert Oehlen on Adderall.
-DAVID COHEN