As much as they are works of art, the assemblage-like paintings of Raymond Saunders are works of archaeology.
In “Post No Bills,” a four-decade overview of his work at two galleries — David Zwirner in Chelsea and Andrew Kreps in TriBeCa — one gets the sense that the artist is excavating his own paintings, literally digging beneath their surfaces to expose hidden layers.
In “Saturdays of Black Color and Habitual Gestures” (1987), for example, Saunders mounts scraps of discarded posters, newspapers and street signage on canvas and then tears at them, yielding a distressed texture of buried paint and paper. In “Pittsburgh ’07-11” (2007), a thick layer of white paint has dried and cracked like a desert floor, its fissured topography revealing black gesso (a primer that makes canvasses smoother and less absorbent). There is life beneath the surface, and it is not content to stay there.