Monte Clark

The night air around Soon-Yi Previn, as Mari Eastman has rendered it, is overbearing. Surrounded by short, effusive brushstrokes, Previn’s impervious silhouette is further peppered by inky blue daubs. A chatty young Moses Farrow stands beside her, the red folds of his jacket matching an awning above (Soon-yi and Moses, 2021). The poolside portrait of a girl that opens ‘Night Life’, Eastman’s second solo exhibition at Goldfinch in Chicago, is executed with similar aplomb. Untitled (Sanded Painting) (2021) is atmospherically grey-pink and lavender; the girl, bored but assured, sits with one leg propped up. Any rococo resonances, however, are challenged by her completely sanded face and body; the abrasions give the effect of splitting light.

Painter Mari Eastman has spent the better part of the last two decades cultivating a visual aesthetic that is at once breezy and self-assured. Pastel-hued,

Soccer Club Club, owned and operated by Drag City Records, brings together curator Mari Eastman’s work along with artists Rebecca Morris, Mary Weatherford, Anna Sew