Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Justin Hoekstra

It’s no accident that each of the abstract paintings in Justin Hoekstra’s solo show at Burlington’s Gallery at Main Street Landing is a 5-foot-9 square — that’s the height of Hoekstra himself. It’s the first tip that the University of Vermont senior’s work is more personal than it appears at first glance. He undertook the series, called “Somebody Told You Wrong,” with one goal: to explore large-format abstraction and “its re-emergence as a field of critical and artistic inquiry despite being renounced as a dead end several times over,” he told Art Map Burlington. With bold colors, expressive lines and intriguing layering, Hoekstra creates images as defiant as the title of his show. Through February 29. Pictured: “C’mon Do the Flumple.”