Sam Mattax's Abstracted Midways

Sam Mattax, "Dinner with Sue", installation view, Fredericks & Freiser, New York, 2025. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, Photo: Cary Whittier.

By EDWARD WAISNIS December 15, 2025

There is nothing quite like the sensation upon encountering a roomful of freely expressive abstract paintings. Especially true if the gallery is redolent with the incense of freshly minted ones as is the case here with the exhibition, Dinner With Sue, of new work by the estimable Sam Mattax at Fredericks & Freiser.

With a palette heavy with the spirit of James Ensor Mattax constructs tangled compositions that recall of Per Kirkeby with the overlaying piquancy of Georges Roualt. Then there is the elan that reminds one of the lushness of John Walker’s 1970s cutbait landscapes, that were subsumed into witchy bayous in subsequent series. Mattax, for his part, rather than the realms of spiritual bugaboo turns his attention to the carnivalesque, literally; a better fit with his midwestern roots (he works out of St. Louis).

Sam Mattax, "Dinner with Sue", 2025 oil, oil stick and lead pencil on canvas, 66 x 54 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, Photo: Cary Whittier.

Dinner with Sue, 2025, heavy with skeins that fuse into globular forms harking to jellyfish (one can only that the titular dinner was not comprised of the coelenterate) in rages of Cerulean and various Cadmiums, in a fashion akin to early-to-mid-career Terry Winters. Overlays of oil stick speak of the present art world moment as well as cleave to Jean-Michel Basquiat who brought its usage to prominence. *

Mattax’s thickets shares a lane with José Parlá and Zeng Fanzhi, both of whom bear the appearances of having plumbed the swift finesse of late DeKooning (as well as pulling from graffiti), as did Sue Williams during her foray into less resolved imagistic-driven between her breakthrough agitprop cartoon period and her current mature resolutions. Whereas, Mattax holds fast to a devotional leaning to mid-twentieth century abstraction; represented on both sides of the Atlantic in the guises of Ab Ex and Art Informel, alternatively.

Sam Mattax, "Now we're both 29," 2024 oil, oil stick and lead pencil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, Photo: Cary Whittier.

Now we’re both, 2025, has Mattax setting his tones against an airer, less clotted, taupe ground. The breathing space provides an environment that sets one attention to ping-pong amongst the islands of coalescence.

Sam Mattax, "In the weeds with Frog and Toad," 2025 oil, oil stick and lead pencil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, Photo: Cary Whittier.

Mattax’s wizardry gains additional resonance in a pair of horizontal canvases, In the weeds with frog and toad and Winters pan and a roaring fork, both 2025, that have an air of 1950s illustration about them. The subjects evoke the swampy outer edges of fairgrounds.

The tent and penant shapes sketched across the surfaces throughout, drifting in and out of focus, could easily be regarded as a hook. But, with Mattax’s controlled slapdash, they never rise to nostalgic kitsch; I am thinking, in contrast, of the work of Childe Hassam that cleaves in just such a direction.

If by chance, please pull on down, 2025, expounds with a chromatically darker vertical picture playing with a blend of aspects from works previously mentioned. Tagged with a title, as throughout, of conundrums suggestive of beat poetry suitable to the visual teasing tangle that ponders deeper meaning beyond the punch it delivers.

Sam Mattax, "Winters pan and a roaring fork," 2025 oil, oil stick and lead pencil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, Photo: Cary Whittier.

* Richard Serra actually bears credit for early usage of the the medium–utilizing it as early as the late 70s–in a deployment that highlighted its plastic pseudo-sculptural qualities rather than use as a painterly implement that served draftsmanship.
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Sam Mattax: Dinner with Sue
Fredericks & Freiser
536 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
November 13–December 20, 2025