In the 1950s, when Joe Overstreet was exhibiting at galleries, teahouses, and jazz clubs around San Francisco, the Beat scene was in full swing. He hung out on Grant Street, in North Beach, with fellow sculptor Sargent Johnson. Their discussions resulted in endless experimentation. Overstreet moved to New York in 1958 and joined the budding Abstract Expressionism movement. His work fused abstraction with jazz, never forgetting the painful realities of Black history. Overstreet died in 2019, at 85, and this exhibition at the Menil marks his first museum survey in 30 years. A special focus is Overstreet’s “Flight Pattern” series of radially suspended paintings, their canvases shaped with grommets and ropes to create conceptual kites of Op and Pop rhythm and color. —Elena Clavarino