Christian Franzen: Shifty | Uffner & Liu
This exhibition was a nice surprise: upstairs in a small gallery on the lower East Side. A series of oils whose subject matter is suspended between those masters of the horizon line: Hiroshi Sugimoto and Mark Rothko.
Christian Franzen calls is “stacking”: painting in horizontal bands, building them up in thin layers until the end result suggests a dawn, a sunset, a landscape or seascape - but also something more abstracted and sublime. Literally “shifty”, in hovering between two states; not sure where the ground or sea ends, the sky begins.
‘Shifty’ (2025)
The show’s signature work, pictured above, is typical: dark, rich bands, topped with an ambiguous sun. Others have ghostly superimposed outlines of animals on top of the bands, sweetening the strangeness.
Franzen lives and works in southern California, which his scenes don’t reflect. He paints from imagination instead. His memories may meld with those of his viewers. Upstairs on my penultimate day in the city, rain drumming on the skylight, the traffic from East Houston Street humming in the distance, he took me there - briefly.
Christian Franzen: Shifty is at Uffner & Liu (New York City). 12 March - 09 May 2026