Altoon Sultan at Hoffman Donahue presents small-scale egg tempera paintings of farm machinery — dairy equipment photographed each spring, then translated through months of layered, meticulous handwork onto gessoed panels and calfskin parchment. Sultan approaches these industrial subjects as a formalist, interested less in agricultural meaning than in the wildly inventive shapes, lines, and volumes that efficient design produces. The strange clarity of unknown machinery invites abstraction and unintended metaphor. Inspired by the predella panels of Fra Angelico and the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Sultan deploys an ancient medium — crisp, translucent, demanding patience — in service of thoroughly modern subjects.
