General Assembly is pleased to present Byline, an exhibition bringing together the worlds of Atticus Wakefield, Susan Kellaway and Raymond Pettibon.
Each artist shares a commitment to the line as a wayfinder for the work. The marks are bold and unapologetic, directing the images forward without definite outcomes; the work is guided by the line. The three artists each establish a visual language obedient to its own internal logic.
In Pettibon’s work, the line is brash and unruly; scratchy ink marks and scrawled text show sarcastic and absurd scenes of Americana. His line and language jostle for space and hierarchy. The artist said in a 2017 interview that his irreverent line “started as a porcupine, but became my dog.”
In Wakefield’s paintings, wiry, lyrical cables twist and cut through one another, building a dense network of mark-making from which figures and landscapes emerge and dissolve. Bodies are porous, destabilized, and continuous with the world around them. They are neither linear nor illustrative, but experiential: rhythmic, muscular, and charged with a tension between precision and chaos.
Susan Kellaway’s figures stand apart from their surroundings, defined by bold, contradictory outlines. Thick, viscous contours hold the languid bodies, weighing them down against the scenery. Her hazy landscapes contain the heat of the Loire Valley, where the paintings were made during the summer heatwave of 2026.
Across the three practices, the line comes through the hand, not as a boundary but as a directing force that can take the work somewhere unanticipated. In Byline, improvisation leads discovery, and the line is given the final word.