I myself am not a systems painter, and so I’ve rarely looked closely at Terry Winters, an artist who is fascinated with systems, but this time I decided to spend time and really look at the work in his current show, now hanging at Matthew Marks Gallery, through June 29. Not surprisingly, spending time paid off, for his spaces opened-up, and started moving, oozing around and through themselves, breathing a tension throughout the surfaces. Even his humanity came through, as pure artistic decisions of subtle hue and temperature changes, unexpected shape variations, and manipulations between sharp, focused edges and fuzzy blurry ones exuded throughout the fields. Winters came out of 1970’s Minimalism, and – especially after discovering the impressive New Mexico landscape while assisting Walter de Maria on an earthwork project – soon became interested in how dry pigments and mark-making could suggest a non-representational spatial illusionism. Eventually, Winters gravitated to the study of mathematical and natural-world systems such as cybernetics, which is the study of circular feedback systems where the end is also the beginning, such as in ecological cycles, cognitive processes, and social structures. This interest in cybernetics and, more specifically “point cloud” 3-dimensional data-modeling, clearly manifests itself in Winters’ current work, but the large paintings and smaller drawings stand on their own and create exciting visual worlds that will suck you in when seen in person. Be sure to not only look from across the room, but up-close to the large canvases and smaller works on paper too.