Each blade indexes a single flick of Calvin Marcus’s brush; these marks accumulate into the densely patterned surfaces of his Grass Paintings. While representational, these compositions are neither grounded in scene, nor focal point, nor perspective; they are nonhierarchical in their treatment of a motif synonymous, in the United States, with conformity. Calling to mind carefully bordered yards, soccer fields, and other overlooked elements of the modern developed landscape, the Grass Paintings continue Marcus’s investigations into symbolic and formal reverberations of the banal.

The artist approaches each new series—often vastly different from its predecessor in both form and style—by adapting his materials and techniques to establish a continuity between the subject of the work, medium, and process. The development of the Grass Paintings mimics the growth of their subject: Marcus begins by covering his linen substrate with a coat of deep umber before building up green clusters from this rich, soil-like ground. Subtle tonal differences between lime, Kelly, forest, and countless other greens create the impression of sunlight dappling the stems, lending depth and dynamism to the compositions. Every stroke is kinesthetic and embodied, its calligraphic form attesting to the movement and pressure of Marcus’s brush as he drags it across the surface. (“Grass script” is a traditional style of Chinese calligraphy in which characters are distilled to continuous strokes.) Clovers dotted throughout lead the eye around the canvas, interrupting the otherwise unbroken pattern of swirling, directional strokes—an expanse that could extend infinitely beyond the bounds of the frame.

Marcus has been depicting grass since 2016, when it formed the setting of his paintings of soldiers collapsed on the battlefield. In the Grass Paintings, this ground is abstracted from its former context. Even absent any semblance of narrative, however, this recent series maintains the former’s eerie atmosphere. Among their many symbolic associations, Marcus’s stark Grass Paintings suggest the alienation of the endlessly repeating fabric of suburbia, where grass hints at nature while reasserting our dominance over it, just as the white picket fence promises nuclear perfection while masking deviance and discord.