Into the Abstract

Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT • svac.org • Through January 4, 2026

This summer, the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) hosts a duo of cerebral creators, Paul Gruhler and Neha Vedpathak, in the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum. Curator Alison Crites has yoked two artists separated by many decades in age and technique, yet are united by their penchant for abstraction. The intention is to show how their meticulous techniques overlap. Gruhler is a veteran artist of sixty years, while Vedpathak is a millennial whose artistic vision is no less mature. Gruhler’s work has a visual discipline where composition is of foremost importance; Vedpathak concentrates on process and flow. Both will be exhibited along with several singular contemporary pieces lent with support from Art Bridges Foundation and the Wolf Kahn Foundation.

This is a wonderful opportunity to experience two masters of the form. Gruhler’s section is a retrospective of sorts representing sixty years of examples from Chelsea Series #15 from 1965 to Harmonic Triangle Series #25 made this year. Inspired by visits to ancient lands where he examined Greek and Roman mosaics, Gruhler incorporates diamonds, triangles, and square shaped canvases and forms. There is a depth and precision, with a muted and mature palette of blues, purples, and reds. The lines are paradoxically fixed, though not rigid. One is reminded of Frank Stella—yet there are many layers of art history and natural inspirations in the richness of his color sense. The mountains of Vermont serve as an acknowledged inspiration.

Meanwhile, Vedpathak taps many spiritual influences including Tantric and Zen Buddhism. Her works appear as organic beings—resilient and aqueous. She creates through a self-developed technique she calls ‘plucking’ where she spends hundreds of hours separating fibers in Japanese paper then adds acrylic and other threads. It’s incredible how she works on such an enormous scale—with such a laborious process. As hermetic as this work could be—think Penelope—it is not intimate in size but expansive, some pieces at 52 x 75 inches.

Vedpathak incorporates acrylic and objects, depending on the messaging. In the past, she has celebrated Detroit’s urban scape and also women’s rights in the soft haze of her amorphous-looking pieces. The tone is muted overall, though never loses its visual potency.

Vermont is fortunate to have two masters of the abstract exhibiting this summer.

Art Bridges Foundation also kindly lent works by Sam Gilliam, Alice Trumball Mason, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Their intent is to challenge us to slow up and stare—and leave our frenetic lives behind.

—Bret Chenkin

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