There’s a beautiful observation in one of the many eulogies published shortly after the painter Robert Ryman’s death. The critic Thomas McEvilley remarks that the painter both considered his work to be an assertion of realism, and that he was influenced by Piet Mondrian, who observed that he found it difficult to keep his works “free of the tragic.” This concept, this oscillation, this struggle, seems particularly apt when exploring Jodi Hays’s works.

Perhaps it’s her materials – quilt fragments, collaged, pieced, and dyed cardboard, crocheted wire hangers. These are transient, every day. But in Hays’s hands, they transform, both physically and conceptually. Take JH24 (after Ryman). The Ryman in question is the late painter, who was known for his minimalist-style works that explored white pigment on varied supports, made using various-sized brushes. Hays takes what has unfortunately become the more powerful signifier – a signature – and inscribes it across her surface. Yes, the palette may have much to share with Ryman, but her subtle poke at rigidity makes her work both refer to and move beyond.

It’s these nuances – what Ryman referred to as “little simple things” – that makes Hays’s works shimmer. Sure, there’s the gold dye in Get Well (Sol to Eva), but there’s the simultaneous interweaving of Hesse’s approach to materiality (yes, that Eva) and destabilization of LeWitt’s (yes, that Sol) systemization. Lines on the surface become substitutes for wall drawings; the Nabisco logo thwarts pop; the fluidity becomes Hesse.

There’s also Hays’s exceptional tenderness. From the message of Get Well (literally) to the crocheted Fate in her grandmother’s writing, these works exude hope. Even in a statement of finitude – fate – the handwriting softens the suggestion. In Impression (dishtowel), we find an everyday kitchen item, transformed, capturing a moment in time. Or Day by Day, which the artist describes as a on a “sized, retired quilt.” There’s the tenderness. That’s Hays gently letting viewers know that she hadn’t shredded a person’s or family’s history in search of creative expression. Rather, at the moment that story might have reached its end, she rescued, reimagined, and re-presented a fragment. Just as memory is fragmentary, and time is fleeting.

With Do Si Do – an anglicized version of back-to-back – Hays’s shapes and forms nudge close and then allow themselves to be pushed away. There are the two oppositional arcs, bottom left and upper right, each an inversion of the other. There are oppositional diagonals, and recurring triangles. Each shape becomes an exploration of variation, that thing in one version and another, each element pushing outward as if it might burst beyond the frame. There’s that beautiful moment in a do-si-do when dancers must let go of each other – momentarily disconnected – and Hays captures the tension and danger apparent in these moments of separation.

His Orchard (for Curt) seems the most enigmatic of all. There’s a referent to attach to, although one that’s not as apparent as Sol or Eva. There are the myriad references to orchards – Cezanne painted them again and again, and of course Chekhov had his cherries – but there’s no way for viewers to know if this is either, or neither, or something else entirely. What’s so arresting about the work is Hays’s palette: myriad shades from red to pink, punctuated by that vibrant green. It’s as if she’s inviting each of us to pause, before jarring us away with that bolt of color.

Hays invites us to consider public and private, passion and profession, one and everyone. Each of her works ignites a flash of interconnectedness – of memory, of modernity, of the momentary – between Hays and us, her audience, as well as between one to each other. Each work has emerged from the same well, and in sharing these, Hays invites us to drink.