Painting on the Edge: A Historical Survey and Channing Hansen, Stephen Friedman Gallery

Artists have toyed with tradition and rejected convention since time began. There's nothing new in abandoning the status-quo in favour of pastures green. Indeed, artistic rebellion has resulted in the birth of art history's most famous artistic movements - Impressionism, Romanticism and Abstract Expressionism to name but a few.

This Spring Mayfair-based Stephen Friedman Gallery presents Painting on the Edge: A Historical Survey and a solo exhibition of work by Californian-based polymath, Channing Hansen - both exhibitions explore artists' radical approaches to painting over the last fifty years,

Bringing together works by eighteen renowned masters and lesser-known artists from around the world, Painting on the Edge: A Historical Survey focuses on those who challenged existing frames of making in the aftermath of World War II.

Take your time to appreciate the geometric precision of Sergio Camargo's work, in which cylinders burst forth from the wall in wave-like symphony. Celebrated for challenging the constraints of plane and volume, the Brazilian artist's creations are characterised by a self-imposed rigour that at once seduces and dumbfounds. Employing a more sensual vocabulary, the art of Cuban artist, Zilia Sánchez, however, explores the personal, the body, the self and the sculptural. Look out for her stretched canvases over hand-moulded wooden armatures above all else.

Fast forward fifty years and meet Channing Hansen. Interested in fusing art, science and technology, the new body of work by Channing Hansen – comprising predominantly hand-knitted textiles mounted on bare wooden frames presented like paintings – questions the role of the digital and the analogue in painting today. His abstract undulating compositions in vibrant colours are based on computer generated algorithms. Hansen follows his computer's ‘instructions’ for shifts in colour, fibre and type of knit. His decision to follow rather than lead ensures Hansen never knows what the work will look like once finished.

Opening ahead of Masterpiece London and Mayfair Art Weekend, nose into the back-streets of St James to discover this eclectic mix of abstract art before the hoarding crowds descend on the city.