In Dinner With Sue, Sam Mattax pursues abstraction tied to a physical and emotional landscape. These new paintings, built through dense layers of oil dragged, scraped, and rebuilt, occupy a space where material and image merge. Rather than composed surfaces, they appear excavated—pulled from strata of memory, work, and terrain.
Mattax’s approach channels the intensity of midcentury gestural abstraction, yet his vantage point is distinctly contemporary. His paintings evoke the aftermath of the American scene: fairground remnants, battered tarps, rain-soaked concrete. Forms hover at the edge of recognition before dissolving back into paint, suggesting a strained optimism. Mattax plays at the edge of collapse, using touch and rhythm to navigate disorder. The canvases feel wrought from turbulence, rather than attempting to clarify it from a distance.
Countering the irony often present in contemporary abstraction, Mattax commits to emotional stakes. The result is a language rebuilt from debris: direct, unsentimental, and urgent. These paintings explore endurance—an insistence that form and meaning can still be constructed amid fragmentation.
Exhibition Information
Location: Fredericks & Freiser, Chelsea
Website: https://www.fredericksfreisergallery.com
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–6pm
Exhibition Dates: November 13 – December 20, 2025
Featured Work
Sam Mattax
I think I’ll call you Cotter, 2025
oil, oil stick and lead pencil on canvas
72 x 60 inches
