Tim Keane reviews the exhibition Esteban Vicente: The Art of Interruption at the Asheville Art Museum, North Carolina, on view through through January 12, 2014.

Keane writes that the show "focuses on how Vicente translates modernist designs for painting into the diction of collage. Braque and Matisse loom as his chief influences. Like those two artists, he often resorts to jigsaw patterns and semi-schematic presentations to create depths from surfaces… After joining the ranks of action painters and color field painters, he discovered how paper itself could achieve those same effects and reinvigorate both collage and abstract painting. This is his most important legacy, and yet his easily recognizable participation in those art movements can eclipse his individuality. Still, the question I kept asking myself during and after the visit was: How can a display of mixed media works that often look improvised and unassuming linger in the mind so monumentally, as if they were giant sculptures or primitive totems?"