GRAY is pleased to participate in Frieze New York 2025 in Booth D07 with a two-person exhibition of paintings by Judy Ledgerwood (b. 1959) and Leon Polk Smith (1906 - 1996). Through distinct yet complementary practices, both artists confront the presumed neutrality of abstract painting — Ledgerwood through a feminist lens, and Smith through a queer one — expanding the field’s formal and conceptual boundaries.

Michigan-based artist Judy Ledgerwood challenges the minimalist, male-centric legacy of abstraction by embracing unapologetically feminine colors and forms. Using repetitive circular shapes and her signature quatrefoil pattern, Ledgerwood bends and relaxes the traditional grid by incorporating influences from the Pattern & Decoration movement, quilting, and textiles into her bold, thickly impastoed paintings.   
         
Working in response to the rigidity of Mondrian’s geometric abstraction and the dominance of Modernism in his time, Leon Polk Smith pursued gently warped geometries and shaped canvases that allowed his compositions to expand beyond the limitations of the painting’s edge. Smith made careful and deliberate color choices, typically only two or three colors per painting, that activate the canvas from an optical perspective, creating the tension and vibration of a total environment. Even when working in a rectilinear format, Smith did not want the outside shape to “determine the arrangement of what is on or inside it.”


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