Then & Now: 1970–2024

Written By Onyedika Chuke

Jeff Way

September 6th - Extended through November 2nd, 2024

Storage
52 Walker Street
4th Floor
Tribeca, New York 10013

Storage is pleased to present Then & Now: 1970–2024, a solo exhibition by Jeff Way (b. 1942). Then & Now: 1970–2024 traces the evolution of Jeff Way’s abstract work from the past to the present. Deeply focused on engagement with grid abstraction and spiritualism, Way distills qualities from West Coast and East Coast abstractionists alike. His work occupies a unique position alongside Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, McArthur Binion, and Jack Whitten, who similarly share a profound connection to the exploration of geometric forms, grids, and their metaphysical implications.

Jeff Way has lived and worked in Tribeca, New York City, for over fifty years. He gained significant recognition in 1973 when Marcia Tucker selected his work for the Whitney Museum’s first official Biennial, which was followed by his solo exhibition at the museum in 1974. Way’s work Ivy’s Gas, gifted by Larry Aldrich, remains part of their permanent collection.

Now, Storage is pleased to feature Way’s new and historical works that illuminate duality and abstraction of the grid. The exhibition displays a striking contrast between flatness and depth in Way’s paintings and the processes he uses to achieve them. Way's abstract practice is deeply rooted in the grid, a motif he explored in the late 1960s, beginning with his Chalk Line Painting series. These early works are constructed using raw pigment snapped onto the canvas in single lines, layering to form dimensional shapes. This series reflects techniques he has honed, reducing painting to its most elemental form.

In his most recent series, Eccentric Squares, Way returns to his exploration of the grid but introduces newer elements that highlight a dynamic and unconventional approach. These paintings, composed again with his distinctive lines, use intersecting colors to create bold, de-centered squares. The result is an immediate dichotomy between the flatness of the surface and the depth of colors and forms within the constructed grid. Way likens his colored lines to musical notes—a fundamental unit of sensory communication—through which he creates harmony, dissonance, and rhythm.

Unlike the rigid, centered grids of his predecessors, Way’s grids are eccentric and fluid, offering a fresh perspective on abstract painting within the downtown New York art scene of the 1960s and beyond. By decentralizing the linear and geometric forms canonized by artists like Piet Mondrian and Sol Lewitt, Way’s work challenges conventional expectations and invites viewers to reconsider the role of grids in abstract compositions. His paintings emerge as living, breathing elements that carry the weight of decades of artistic research and experimentation.

Then & Now: 1970–2024 opens on September 6th and is extended through November 2nd, 2024. The exhibition is held at Storage, located on the fourth floor of 52 Walker Street, Tribeca, NY. This exhibition reaffirms Storage's mission to honor the legacies of intergenerational artists like Jeff Way, whose work continues to inspire and challenge the boundaries of contemporary art.

  • Opening Reception
    6-8pm
    Friday, September 6th, 2024
    Storage, 52 Walker St, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10013

    Dieter Buchhart & Jeff Way In Conversation
    5-7pm
    Saturday, October 26th, 2024
    Storage, 52 Walker St, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10013

  • Jeff Way (b. 1942) has lived and worked in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City since 1969. After his arrival in New York, Way was featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art at their 1973 Biennial curated by Marcia Tucker, and again the following year in a solo exhibition. Since then, Way’s work has been included in various exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston, TX), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA), as well as other museums and galleries. Way’s works have been added to the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum through a gift by Larry Aldrich, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Cincinnati Art Museum.

    Way began his Chalk Line Painting series in the late 1960s to explore the use of the grid through pigment and acrylic medium. These paintings are constructed using raw pigment snapped onto the canvas in single lines that layer together to form dimensional shapes. He returns to his use of the grid in his most recent series of paintings, Eccentric Squares. Composed again with his distinctive lines, Way uses intersecting color to create a sequence of bold, de-centered squares. The paintings present an immediate dichotomy between the flatness of the surface and the depth of colors and forms on the constructed grid.

Exhibition Press

Featured
Jeff Way: Then & Now: 1970–2024
Jeff Way: Then & Now: 1970–2024

It's a fifty-four year retrospective that is as eye-popping as it is anomalous. It leaves out the entire torso of Way’s career and leaps from the feet to the head, so to speak, from the early 1970s directly to now. And it leaves us to figure out how he’s gotten here. But the clues are everywhere, and what they reveal is how trust in a process can open up some very Big Ideas after all. What these paintings have in common through their different periods is their investigation of the intimate relations between chance and intention, control and surrender, color and structure, hand and mind, and even between bodily presence and absence. These are dichotomies we tend to take for granted, or even ignore, never asking whether they are opposed, how they might be reconciled, or what their actual relations are.

The New York Times: Galleries
The New York Times: Galleries

Sometime in the late 1960s, Jeff Way sprinkled pure acrylic pigment over a primed canvas and made a grid pattern with a chalk line. When he was satisfied, he fixed everything into place by spraying on medium. In one early example of the series, which he calls “eccentric squares,” the red lines are crisp and closely set, so that despite the blue and yellow notes and the rust-colored fog that envelops the whole, the piece bears a clear relationship to the Cartesian serenity of 1960s minimalism.

Jeff Way Then & Now: 1970–2024
Jeff Way Then & Now: 1970–2024

Having visited “Then & Now: 1970–2024”, a selection of paintings by the artist Jeff Way, I was struck by the physicality present in the art and the exhibition. First, there is a palpable sense of history in the space. The gallery, Storage, sits a few stories above the crowd of cars and pedestrians that populate busy Walker Street in TriBeCa—which has experienced a renaissance as a hot spot in the New York art scene. Accessed by a tiny elevator, the loft space, is furnished with craftsman-like furniture, and creaking floors. It eschews the veneer of a white cube and provides an atmosphere that reminds a visitor that there was an important moment in art, pre-Chelsea, when this then moribund part of Manhattan became the gritty home to artists who would define the end of the twentieth century. The atmosphere of Storage is an authentic and physical reminder of this history, while Jeff Way is a direct artistic link to that past

Jeff Way Masters Geometrical Lines, Grids, and Abstraction in ‘Then & Now’
Jeff Way Masters Geometrical Lines, Grids, and Abstraction in ‘Then & Now’

Using almost every drawing and painting technique in artistry, Way is acclaimed for his chalk line grid paintings. He makes them with a carpenter’s chalk tool filled with powdered pigments. He then snaps the line across the canvas, creating nearly perfect grid lines with a do-it-yourself yardstick with nails. Much of this work, as well as his abstract pieces, are now on view at Storage at 52 Walker St. until October 5. Then & Now displays Way’s work from 1970 to 2024, showing the striking contrast of flatness and depth on his canvases.

Whitewall: A Tour of Jeff Way’s Show at Storage with Onyedika Chuke
Whitewall: A Tour of Jeff Way’s Show at Storage with Onyedika Chuke

Last week in New York, Storage opened its latest exhibition titled “Then & Now: 1970–2024” by the local contemporary artist Jeff Way. On view through October 5, the solo presentation celebrates Way’s work over nearly seven decades, featuring historical and new paintings he’s made in his TriBeCa home and studio for over 50 years. Several included in the show are from Way’s “Eccentric Squares” series, which offers a new look at the distinct lines of grids through decentered squares. 

Onyedika Chuke
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