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.

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.

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

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.

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.