In 2006, I interviewed Stephen Westfall about his longtime interest in the possibilities of a skewed grid, among other subjects. He came to this grid by connecting Agnes Martin with Paul Klee; he also discussed vulnerability and planar abstraction, and the different sources from modern signs and symbols he could tap into: In my work, there’s Navajo rugs, Walker Evans, and NASCAR scoreboards. You see this stuff and then you go back to start thinking about a structure that has all that without advertising any single one of those things; a structure that might breed another structure in and of itself, and all those things are in it.The relationship of vulnerability with planar abstraction and the culture of signs and symbols came to mind when I visited Westfall’s current exhibition, Ornithology, at Alexandre Gallery. The title has three points of reference: The great American saxophonist Charlie Parker, who revolutionized jazz improvisation, was popularly known as “Bird”; the triangles that serve as key elements in Westfall’s current work allude to abstracted bird beaks; and the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman famously said “Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.” Stephen Westfall, “Kirby Cove” (2025), oil and alkyd on canvasWhat Parker and Newman, both pioneering artists, share is an interest in phrasing — whether in music or painting — within an overall composition. Parker is credited with asymmetrical phrasing, which broke up the patterned rhythms that structure big band jazz, while Newman used his vertical “zips” to divide his paintings into uneven areas in order to merge the different sides into one experience. The tension between merging and dividing, and well as constantly fluctuating unities, lay at the core of Westfall’s geometric abstractions, with the triangle as the central feature in keeping the viewer engaged.The exhibition consists of 10 oil and alkyd paintings from 2024 and ’25, and seven gouaches dating from 2010 to 2025, as well as a wall mural painted in the stairwell connecting the first and second floors. The shift in the wall’s orientation gave Westfall the opportunity to divide the mural into discrete sections, “Conference of Birds” I, II, and III (2025). The collision of the sections — each of which incorporates triangles in different colors and interlocking, sawtooth configurations — is simultaneously cacophonous and rhythmic. Two gouaches with similar compositions, “Sharp Haze” and “Olivera,” both from 2010, convey how far Westfall has advanced in his use of the diamond, coupled with the expansive limits of asymmetry. Both gouaches depict concentric diamonds. In each, the large, monochromatic diamond in the center dominates the picture plane, while the enclosing ones are cropped by the paper’s edges. The two works are composed of static forms, with their cropped edges hinting that this stasis continues beyond the purview of the pictorial space. Stephen Westfall, “JuJu (for Wayne Shorter)” (2025), oil and alkyd on canvasWestfall has spent his career working within the geometric abstraction genre while trying to disrupt the rhythmic patterns associated with planar abstraction and Op Art. The multivalent tensions and asymmetrical shifts in “Ornithology” and “JuJu (for Wayne Shorter)” (both 2025) never settle into stable compositions, as they likely would in the geometric abstraction of previous generations, whether it’s that of Pattern and Decoration, Op Art, or Hard Edge painting.“JuJu (for Wayne Shorter)” is divided into a grid of nine irregular rectangles on a square canvas, each one further divided diagonally into two triangles. This composition allows Westfall to improvise with color, painting each of the 18 triangles a different monochromatic hue. For some paired triangles, he uses sharply contrasting colors, and for others, he applies related tones, such as two different grays. It is with “Ornithology” and “Juju (for Wayne Shorter),” and two related paintings, “Cabana I” and “Cabana II” (both 2024), that Westfall breaks open planar abstraction more than he ever has. The logic of these works is internal. There is no formula to his color choices, and he does not rely on a signature structure. He achieves his desire to improvise and he chooses unpredictable colors. With this group of new paintings, Westfall has entered a groundbreaking phrase in his long career.Stephen Westfall, “The Tall Grass” (2025), oil and alkyd on canvasStephen Westfall: Ornithology continues at Alexandre Gallery (25 East 73rd Street, Second and Third Floors, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through October 25. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.