In her current show at Five Myles in Brooklyn, Barbara Friedman explores the tenuous relationship between pure abstraction and painterly figuration. “The Hysterical Sublime” consists of a series of formal color field paintings that appear to have been hijacked by a legion of zoomorphic creatures. In a dual process of discovery and intervention, Friedman liberates the creatures from the paint, endowing them with enough agency to administer to each other’s needs. The creatures make us feel slightly uneasy as they confront our curious gaze, but Friedman seems to regard them as her allies, despite the havoc they’ve wreaked upon her pure color fields. But maybe that was her intention all along—namely, to turn formal painting on its head and poke fun at it. She readily admits that the creatures are ridiculous, illogical, and skeptical of art movements. They’re about intimacy and connection rather than the critical concerns that characterize nonrepresentational painting. The anthropomorphized animals imbue the paintings with heartbreaking humanity, making it hard to look at them and harder to look away. Whether by accident or design, Friedman paints a portrait of our species more relatable because her subjects are animal rather than human. While we’ve become woefully inured to the afflictions of our fellow humans, few among us can bear to witness the suffering of an animal. But I may have it all wrong; the creatures may not be like so many actors in a Greek tragedy. They may be perfectly content in their two-dimensional habitat, blithely chomping their way through fields of pigment and mocking any attempts at critical art theory. If Friedman’s would-be color field paintings have indeed been usurped by snakes, snails, whiskers, and whales, it’s doubtless for our benefit. The art world won’t suffer the loss of another purely abstract painting, but it can surely afford to take itself less seriously.