Untitled #7 (Carnival, Bahia, Brazil), 2022

Mixed media on canvas, 86 x 86 in.

Howardena Pindell has rigorously explored surface, texture, and color over a consequential fifty-year career. She is known for employing unconventional materials in her work, such as glitter, talcum powder, and even perfume. Perhaps most important to the trajectory of her practice, however, is the hole punch, which she started using around 1970. Crucially for Pindell’s later output, she saved the by-products of her hole-punching endeavors—thousands of tiny paper circles, known as chads—which, in 1973, began to make their way into the works themselves. After fixing canvas to the floor and spray-painting and squeegeeing acrylic paint through stencils, she applied confetti-like constellations of chads to the surface, where they adhered to the wet paint. The shaped canvas Untitled #7 (Carnival, Bahia, Brazil) is unified by an expanse of fiery magenta while Pindell’s iconic punched paper dots grace the surface with raw bursts of vivid color. This monumental work marks the artist’s return to the grid—a theme of particular interest to Pindell in the 1970s. Occasionally, the thick underlying surface cracks, revealing a matrix of cut and sewn canvas underneath.