Torkwase Dyson, a Chicago-born artist now based in Beacon, New York, is challenging conventional distinctions between painting and sculpture in her latest exhibition at Pace Gallery. The show, titled "Seeing in Blue," features 13 paintings, including a diptych and a triptych, all of which blur the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional art forms.

Dyson, who studied painting at Yale under Mel Bochner, is known for her installations of black metal boxes and arcs that resemble architectural drawings but defy traditional sculptural categories. In this exhibition, however, she reaffirms her identity as a painter while incorporating elements that introduce physical depth to her canvases.

Using layers of highly diluted acrylic paint poured in washes, Dyson creates ghostly, cloudlike fields of color that tend toward black, with subtle undertones of red, blue, or green revealed at the edges. Over these fields, she applies geometric lines, thickly impastoed circles and arcs, small flaglike triangles, and minute dots of white or yellow paint evoking stars. The compositions suggest abstract forms that recall nautical charts, star maps, and tools of applied geometry.

Further enhancing the dimensionality of the paintings, Dyson attaches brass or bronze flat, doorway-shaped objects she terms "hardware" to the canvas edges, between which she stretches taut white or black cotton strings. These strings hover above the paintings’ surfaces or extend down to meet corners, invoking plumb lines or levels. In two works, jagged plywood arcs painted to match the canvas add subtle, shadow-casting layers. The circular canvases divided between shiny and matte black evoke porthole views of a horizon, reinforced by the addition of narrow metal sills.

While the visual motifs draw on references to the sea and outer space, Dyson’s work stops short of literal representation. Instead, these associative elements guide viewers to perceive the surfaces with a sense of depth and translucency, akin to looking into night skies or shimmering water. The paintings maintain a balance of abstract variation; stars and arcs shift in number and direction, and shades of black lean differently across the collection, creating both unity and distinction among the works.

Dyson’s approach challenges the typical separation of painting’s flatness and sculpture’s volume, emphasizing a complex, multidimensional experience grounded in painting’s foundational two-dimensional plane. The exhibition highlights her continued exploration of spatial perception, materiality, and abstraction, offering a nuanced invitation to engage with form and depth in unexpected ways.