WRITINGS and reviews
Studio Visit Volume 53_ Open Studio Press 2025/2026 : Suzanne Wright “Supreme (June 24th, 2022 Roe.V.wade overturned)”Vinyl Flashe Paint, Fleur Matte paint and acrylic on Raw linen mounted to wood panel, 36”x36”
Amalia Rizos who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film/Cinema/Video Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts is a contemporary writer and marketing professional specializing in art, culture, and film. Art Spiel is an independent digital magazine and platform dedicated to art and culture. Founded in 2018 by Brooklyn-based artist, writer, and curator Etty Yaniv, the publication serves as a critical space for dialogue within the global art community.
The review of Alchemy of Equals by Matthew Ward: 2024
“Always historicize!” so goes Fredric Jameson’s cri de coeur in his magisterial The
Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. A definitive and oft-
repeated statement on the contextualization of art within the greater narrative(s);
however, the ground is tenuous and the closer we look, this statement, like a
funhouse mirror, warps and distorts: what we are left with is its opposite—that at
the end of this process of historicization, art cannot be historicized, for much as we
seek, however, nobly, to analyze and contextualize the social conditions (as well as
the artist) that produced it, it fundamentally eludes explanation and understanding.
It is a private language in the Wittgensteinian sense that remains forever outside of
its time and place.
Born in New London, CT in 1968, the work of Suzanne Wright, moves in similar
ways. Undulating, shifting, warping. The boldness of the colors and the mirror play
—images are inverted, twisted, and compressed. While operating within a familiar
template of geometric abstraction, Wright’s work is informed by her work as an
AIDS activist and her lived experience inseparable from the collective queer
struggle, dating back to her days as a founding member of the radical feminist art
collective Fierce Pussy. In works like “The Dome”, a precise geometry of multi-
colored panels gives the impression of a shelter, a place of healing painstakingly
carved out. Conversely, the stark lines and muted colors of “Untitled (Area and
Palladium Hybrid)” and “Star in Man” imply a reticence. The bright, playful
“Faggot Mandelas” is union, connection, a grasping. The angular nature of
Wright’s work reflects the tumultuous nature of our current world. Beneath it all is
a probing anger—“as I am building this body of work, I am consumed with fury,”
says Wright, and indeed, beneath the abstraction and linearity is a seething anger of
a transfiguring, alchemical intensity. Wright is deeply aware of the nature of
politics as expression, as a means of toppling the entrenched power structures that
she recognizes as decidedly male. Here, again, the trickster inversion, the mirror
play: “How do I feminize the Washington Monument?” As though viewed by God,
a topographic map of the phallic Monument and its environs becomes a “goddess
eye view”; viewed from overhead, the phallus is inverted and now at once gives
the appearance of a hole or a wound. The woman, the transfiguration, the equal.
The “alchemy of equals”.
For the artist, the work is deeply cathartic. She continues on, describing the process
of creation, a private language understood by her alone, giving life to it,
emboldening it, playing with its myriad riches—transfiguring it, transferring it
onto the canvas: “while physical alchemy deals with altering and transforming the
properties in the physical world with this piece and others, I use color and
geometry, geometry to grapple with my moral disillusion of our current time.”
Wright bends geometry and a male-centric architecture to suit her own ends—her
trickster alchemy on full display as she adroitly queers and inverts the symbolic
and patriarchal structures of the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, and the
Washington Monument. Trickster activism as lived experience.
The world is at once bold and playful, angry and austere, tender and obscure. As
we fall further into an era of profound global anxiety and political upheaval, the
work of bold tricksters like Suzanne Wright becomes nothing short of vital.
Mathew Ward is a independent writer and art critic, living in Brooklyn NY
Suzanne Wright “Striking Perspective, Meditations on Transformation” Publication supported by the Grant Wood Art Colony (2022)
Portal to anywhere
In conversation with Ramzi Fawaz (forthcoming)
POWER
Review by Ru Hockley
A Vital Collapse In The Meaning Of Holes
By Katie Brewer Ball
Where Does Escape Go?
By Katie Brewer Ball
Publications
Press
The Quintessentially Queer Art of Collage, Hyperallergic, 2016
Art matters a biennial with another whitney in mind
We Are Becoming: Artist Organized Spaces In Los Angeles by:Robby Herbst
"Rainbow Highway's" inclusion in Art and Queer Culture book
Exiting the Deathstar: Suzanne Wright, Commonwealth and Council. Los Angeles, CA.
G.L.O.W.: Suzanne Wright/A.L. Steiner, Commonwealth and Council. Los Angeles, CA.
Vessel: Suzanne Wright/Tony Payne, ACP (Artist Curated Projects)
Darin Klein and Friends Presents: Suzanne Wright
Darin Klein and Friends: Community
Darin Klein and Friends: W.T.F.! (Women Together Fantastic)
San Diego NOW, Oceanside Museum of Art
Sexy Times, Morgan Lehman Gallery (Artcat)
Sexy Times, Morgan Lehman Gallery (Chelsea Now)
Empire of This, Claire Oliver Gallery
Shared Women, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
The Last Time They Met: Stephen Friedman Gallery
All for One, One for All, Aeroplastics Contemporary
Ridykeulous, Participant Inc (NY Arts Magazine)
Armpit of the Mole, Your New Favorite Drawings Compilation
Garden of Earthly Delights, Anna Kustera Gallery
The Forest, Monya Rowe Gallery
Into the Abyss: Art and Sex in the Landscape
Another Day on Planet Earth, DeChiara-Stewart
Wattage and Friendship, Muller-DeChiara
In Sugarland: DeChiara-Stewart Gallery
The Choice, Exit Art (New York Times)
Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base: Suzanne Wright