VGALLERY&STUDIOOL. 5 NO. 4 March-April 2003 New York The World of the Working Artist ANNE BACHELIER

April 4 through May 11, 2003 CFM Gallery 112 Greene Street, SoHo, New York City 10012 (212) 966-3864 Fax (212) 226-1041 Monday thru Saturday 11am to 6pm Sunday Noon to 6pm [email protected] www.cfmgallery.com GALLERY&STUDIO Untitled 2002, acrylic and plastic film on canvas, 36" X 36" studio: gallery hours:Tues -Sat11-6pm NYC, 10001tel:646.230.0056 530 W. 25thSt.,4thFl(betwn10th & 11th Aves.) Pleiades Gallery plasticity 10, 2003 April 22-May Missy Lipsett 212.369.9795 Broome StreetGallery e-mail: [email protected] Tuesday -Sunday 11am-6pm212 226 6085 VINCENT ARCILESI May 13-June1,2003 Arcilesi inMorocco 498 BroomeStreet,New York, N.Y. 10013 “Al BadiPalace,Marrakesh”2002-3 Oiloncanvas(3panels)9'x18'. 12-7pm daily, 1-5wkndsex: May 7&14, 3-7pm•May 15, 12-5pm 212-475-3424 (Gallery closedMay (Gallery 16) 212-475-3424 May 7-17, Tues., 2003/Reception: May 6, 5-7:30pm

“Morning Sun at the Pond, Girverny” Oil on linen 60" X 41" 15 Gramercy ParkSouth, NYC10003 The National Club Arts Brown Hagood (Gregg andMarquis Galleries) France &Flowers A PRIL /M AY 2003 Dorothy A.Culpepper Reception: April 246-8pm Reception: April My World of Possibility of World My April 22 -May10,April 2003

“Lighting Tree” acrylic 50" X 30" Barbara K. Schwartz G&S pg. 13

Vincent Highlights Arcilesi, pg. 17 On the Cover: Anne Bachelier arts’ enchanting Scheherazade is back with a sensational solo show and a new illustrated book. –Page 4 Mary Frances Judge, pg. 33

László Paizs, Brown pgs. 20-21 Hagood, pg. 11

Allan Simpson, pg. 8 Cecily Barth Firestein, pg. 35

Ruth Poniarski, pg. 25

Alan Munro, pg. 22-23 Missy Lipsett, pg. 9 Amy Bright Unfried, pg. 15

Subscribe to GALLERY&STUDIO GALLERY&STUDIO An International Art Journal $20 Subscription $16 for additional Gift Subscription $40 International PUBLISHED BY Mail check or Money Order to: © EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 217 East 85th St., PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Phone: 212-861-6814 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Name (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] Address EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack City MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner State/Zip DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Juliet M. Ross The GALLERY&STUDIO advertising deadline for the June/July/August issue is May 13 for color, May 20 for black/white. 2 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 ALLAN SIMPSON Urban Metaphors: Machine, Nature & Design “View of Maspeth” oil/canvas 36" X 48" “View of Maspeth” May 8-31, 2003/Reception: Thurs., May 15, 6-8pm

511 West 25th St., Chelsea • NYC 10001 Tues - Sat. 11 am - 5:30 pm • 212 255 9050 • Fax 212 255 9020 www.amsterdamwhitneygallery.com “East Hampton Pines,” Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 72" X media on canvas, Acrylic and mixed “East Hampton Pines,” Bernice Faegenburg Night and Day May 20 - June 7, 2003 Reception: Saturday, May 31, 4-6 p.m. VIRIDIAN@Chelsea 530 West 25th Street, 4th Floor, NY, NY 10001 Tel(212) 414-4040 • www.viridianartists.com Tuesday - Saturday 10:30am - 6pm

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 In Her New Oils, Anne Bachelier’s Ingenues Blossom into Divas

“So even though La Princesse’s watery gaze saw cruelty when it first met that of her owner, she could do noth- ing but silently weep as love lit the crystal enclosure.” Illustration by Anne Bachelier for the Princess of Wax mixed media ven if Anne Bachelier had never put opportunities for a great illustrator to pros- As an illustrator of books, then, Bachelier Ebrush to canvas, perish the thought, she per, given the realities of book publishing in belongs to a tradition that no longer exists, would still be one of our greatest book illus- this age of cost-cutting and computer which flourished in an era when masters of trators––although, sadly, today there are few graphics. the art such as Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur 4 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Rackham, and Alfred Kubin illuminated nists of her recent canvases have become them like courtiers, as they flaunt their stat- texts rather than merely complementing noticeably more formidable. Less the wil- uesque beauty in flowing silken gowns even them; when the illustrator breathed visual lowy ingenue and more the imperious more opulent than those in which Marchesa life into the book, imbuing it with magical grande dame, they appear decidedly more Luisa Casati had herself painted by Giovanni atmospheres inseparable from the author’s self-possessed than the passive, dreamy hero- Boldini and others. For while the artists prose and every bit as important. ines of her past work. This points to the commissioned to immortalize Marchesa Although that golden age of illustration is possibility that–– just as a greater range of Casati were, to some extent at least, con- long gone, Bachelier’s art dealer and cre- brilliant red hues appeared on her painting stricted by the bounds of recognizable reali- ative collaborator Neil Zukerman has made palette in the wake of her illustrations for ty, Bachelier recognizes no such barriers. a heroic effort to revive it, just for her. “Rose Daughter”––the central figures in And the painterly alchemy that enables her “It’s fortunate that we both have under- Bachelier’s new oils have absorbed some of to imbue her most fanciful visions with flaw- standing spouses, because Anne and I are the flamboyant spirit of La Marchesa Luisa less verisimilitude grows more impressive lovers,” Zukerman says. Then, lest one get Casati, who desired to be “a living work of with each exhibition. the idea that the two couples live like char- art” and, toward that end, commissioned Yet, while the technical finesse that acters in some ultrasophisticated French art countless portraits of herself from the lead- Bachelier began developing as a student at film, he adds, “I mean, in the creative rather ing painters and photographers of her day. Ecole des Beaux Arts, La Seine, in the mid- than the sexual sense!” Certainly this exhibition is especially rich to-late sixties serves her well in making her So far, under Zukerman’s CFM imprint, in the imaginary portraits that have always images palpable in pigment, her most pre- of which he is the designer as well as the been an important part of Bachelier’s oeu- cious creative resource is still her ability to publisher, their affaire de livre has spawned vre. In the past, these have often suggested transport us imaginatively, to make us com- a deluxe hardcover monograph centering on surrogate self-portraits, projecting some- plicit in her daydreams. Bachelier’s oeuvre as a painter, as well as thing of the artist’s retiring, almost ethereal Witness the new large canvas called two lavishly illustrated works of fantastic fic- personal demeanor. Now, they appear more “Through The Wall,” where four fantastic tion: “Rose Daughter”, a retelling of Beauty assertive, robust, even dangerous, as seen in personages parade into the viewers’ field of and the Beast with a text by Robin one picture of a regal porcelain-skinned fig- vision as though glimpsed in passing on a McKinley; and, more recently, “The ure, her red hair billowing up like a mush- nighttime sidewalk: a tall, beautiful woman Princess of Wax––A Cruel Tale,” written by room cloud and serving as a nest for serpen- wearing a pink opera mask and luminous Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando tine creatures and even a crouching red pink gown; a creature with the head of a Yaccarino, the imminent publication of demon. Also notable in this regard is “The raven and the nude body of a nubile young which was noted in the February 2003 issue Memory of Magic,” a triptych on hinged girl; a spectral white-winged being, and a of Vanity Fair. panels in which two fantastic creatures are prancing companion of indeterminate gen- “The Princess of Wax/La princesse de tethered by red ribbons to a central figure der in dark evening wear. cire,” with texts in English and French who appears to be a sorceress, holding a Only Bachelier could impart to such an (including a deluxe limited edition) is a mysterious object from which another tiny unlikely quartet of anomalies the completely decadent fairy tale spun off Ryersson and figure dangles like a doll. natural quality of two carefree couples out Yaccarino’s “Infinite Variety: The Life and Another portrait features a bewitching on the town on a double date! Legend of the Marchesa Casati,” a biogra- beauty with slender branches encircling her An image of a raven (albeit here without phy of an eccentric Belle Epoque beauty head like a tiara and continuing down over the anthropomorphic alteration seen in the who paraded a cheetah on a leash and, as her torso.Yet another figure is surrounded above-mentioned picture) appears once Vanity Fair put it, “plunged into extrava- by circular masks that resemble sun and moon again in another large new oil called “Lost gant-exhibitionism-aestheticism-narcis- symbols yet also have a skull-like quality that in Her Dreams.” Perched on a large orb, sism––living a life of striking surrealism.” makes them somewhat forbidding. the bird gazes over the shoulder of a young Several of Anne Bachelier’s original pen Overall, there is the sense that Bachelier’s woman in a long white dress, who sprawls on and mixed media illustrations for the book women have recently come into fuller pos- the floor watching a small red devil, nude can be seen, along with her new oil paint- session of their powers; that they have blos- and quite anatomically correct, posture in a ings in her solo exhibition at CFM Gallery, somed into full-fledged femmes fatales with manner suggesting a lascivious dance. Yet, 112 Greene Street, from April 4 through more than one trick up their silken sleeves even as she communes with this demonic May 11. ––when in fact they wear sleeves, since some being, she retains an innocence that makes Bachelier’s creative process is so deeply now bare creamy white shoulders. her seem a throwback to the fairy tale prin- intuitive that it is difficult to determine In Bachelier’s multifigure compositions as cesses who appeared in some of Bachelier’s exactly how her illustrations influence her well, most of her female characters now earlier pictures. Indeed, the news that paintings, or vice versa, although there defi- comport themselves more like divas than Bachelier’s husband recently presented her nitely seems to be a crossfertilization ingenues. No longer do they resemble pas- with a pet raven reinforces the impression between the two art forms. Further compli- sive waifs and wraiths at the mercy of pre- that “Lost in her Dreams” is the sole surro- cating the attempt to speculate on the posterously posturing human males or gate self-portrait in the present exhibition. degree to which any aspect of outer reality horny chimeras who might wish to have As always, however, all of Anne impinges on the inner dream-realm from their weird way with them. Now even bril- Bachelier’s new paintings exist in an which this unique artist draws her inspira- liant red demons with long curling tails fall unearthly and timeless realm where not even tion is the fact that she has inhabited her at their feet like the male supplicants who the laws of gravity need be respected. private world since childhood. Thus her grovel before indifferent young goddesses Limned in sumptuous glazes of glistening illustrations, like her oils, appear to be in the great Polish writer and draftsman oil pigments, lit by mysterious orbs or conjured rather than plotted, as though she Bruno Schulz’s masochistic print portfolio ornate lanterns, enveloped in atmospheric channels them from the same mysterious “The Book of Idolatry.” mists, her fanciful figures soar through source as her paintings. Indeed, all manner of subordinate person- vistas as seemingly limitless as her singular Nonetheless, many of the female protago- ages, human and otherwise, flutter about aesthetic vision. ––Ed McCormack APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 László Paizs “To the Memory of the Book Burners, No.1,” 1986, paper, plexiglass block, 25.5 X 14 X 8 in.

László Paizs is Hungary’s greatest living artist, a figure of comparable stature to Joseph Beuys or Anselm Kiefer. Yet, he had to wait forty years for his first U.S. solo exhibition, which took place recently at Westwood Gallery, 578 Broadway, in Soho. Read all about it in New York Notebook (centerfold).

6 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Diverse Angles of Vision in the Art of Sung Mo Cho he Korean- born artist Sung Mo Cho between images are created with jagged red larger area on the right combines a neo- Texpands upon a theme he debuted in a strokes, broken off like lightning bolts, pointillistic sky with a glistening tour de previous exhibition in his new solo exhibi- seeming to symbolize a sense of violent frac- force of an atmospheric nocturnal cityscape. tion, “Along the Road,” at Pleiades Gallery, ture. Over this, a slender tree is superimposed 530 West 25th Street, from April 22 Aside from these singularly stark elements, and sharply delineated in a precise, decora- through May 10. however, the more delicate strokes of color tive manner reminiscent of art nouveau. Cho, who is presently an adjunct profes- with which Cho knits all of his compositions Few other painters could merge so many sor at Mercy College in New York and has together, combining primary and secondary diverse elements into a harmoniously satisfy- exhibited widely in both Korea and the colors with great sensitivity to create subtle ing whole. Nor could they carry off a com- United States, cannot be called a landscape chromatic harmonies, make the overall position such as Cho’s “Along the painter in any tra- Road––Nature,” ditional sense of 2003, a more the term. For loosely painted while elements of work in acrylic on landscape are pres- matboard, in ent in his paint- which the wind- ings, his composi- blown branches of tions delineate a bare winter trees, terrain that is not juxtaposed with a only partly man- winding gray road, made but also are distorted in an often includes eerily elongated superimpositions manner akin to the of diverse imagery. hair-raising In one acrylic Expressionism of on traditional Edvard Munch. In Korean paper, for yet another acrylic example, Cho jux- on canvas, “Along taposes gracefully the Road––The delineated trees, Image of the City clouds, floating & Nature,” three floral forms, and a landscape images small self-portrait. painted in pale col- More typically, he ors with a distinct- gives us simultane- ly Asian atmos- ous views of natu- phere give way to ral and urban vis- a larger image that tas in the same suggests a rainy picture. These jux- night in the city tapositions imbue seen through the his compositions “Along the Road - Garden” 35 3/4 " X 28 1/2 " mixed media on canvas. Sung Mo Cho’s solo gridded panes of a with a sense of show at Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from April 22 - May 10. Cho will also have a solo window, loosely time; of the shift- show at Locust Valley Library, 170 Buckram Rd., Locust Valley, from June 2-28. brushed in a vigor- ing visions and views, as in a Chinese hand- mood of this painting tender and elegiac. ous semi-abstract manner. scroll, where the land unrolls before one For along with being an exquisite colorist, Equally striking is Cho’s unusual han- almost cinematically. Sung Mo Cho is a sublime painter, pos- dling of space, as seen in “Along the Road Cho, though, expresses the more disjoint- sessed of a technical mastery which lends his ––S. Nature,” 2002,” an acrylic on canvas in ed sensations of our fragmented modern relatively small paintings a presence and a which the dominant image of a sinuous tree world in another manner: by dividing his power surpassing that of many larger works. with red buds, set against a deep ocher compositions into sections separated by While the overblown scale of many con- ground, hugs the picture plane flatly, while highways. These symbolic linear highways, temporary paintings tends to keep the view- an area immediately below it opens to a with their white divider lines, are painted in er at arm’s length, Cho’s intimate pictures vista of a landscape where a winding high- different colors in different paintings and seduce us with their “touch”: the finesse way weaves between trees in deep perspec- wind gracefully through the compositions, with which he wields his brush to build the tive. Here, as in other paintings by Cho, dis- in which they are major elements. Although surfaces in his pictures with myriad strokes crete areas bordered by his linear highway they are seen from an aerial perspective, that simultaneously resemble the sunny, suc- symbols open like windows within the larger much as highways are delineated on a map, culent daubs of Impressionism and the lin- composition, offering glimpses of other the images that they weave between are ear delicacy of Asian ink and watercolor places and contrasting spaces. painted head-on. painting. It is Sung Mo Cho’s ability to combine so In one particularly affecting painting in Particularly lovely in this regard is the many different techniques and angles of the “Along the Road” series, Cho combines acrylic on Korean traditional paper entitled vision, even while working within more or images of a graceful Asian tree, a large, styl- “Along the Road––City & Nature,” 2002, less consistent formats and with similar sub- ized red rose, and the Twin Towers of the in which Cho combines several different jects, that enables him to imbue each of his World Trade Center, with other city build- techniques in different areas of the picture. compositions with its own distinctive mood ings clustered far below them. Here, rather In the lower left portion of the composition, and make it a complex and challenging visu- than the linear highway symbols seen in an earthy, hilly terrain lit by a full moon is al metaphor for our transient age. most of Cho’s other paintings, the divisions limned in softly muted strokes, while the ––Maurice Taplinger APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 Allan Simpson: Iconographer of the Jeweled City ohn Russell once called New York City This quality comes across with particu- tanks and smokestacks locked into a vise- J“one of the supreme subjects of our lar poignancy in Simpson’s oil on canvas tight composition between a vibrant pink century,” and that statement still holds “Winter, Hudson River,” where the river, and blue striped sky and the bucolic true for the present century as well. with its zigzagging patterns of ice, fills the foliage that foams around the bottom of Certainly the contemporary painter Allan foreground and the gray, misty skyline can the picture like candy-colored clouds. Simpson captures something of the sub- be seen beyond the bridge that spans the Here, with a coloristic audacity to rival lime in his depictions of even the most width of the horizontal composition. that of Milton Avery, Allan Simpson uncelebrated corners of the city. There is the sense in this picture of great uncovers the hidden beauty of an obscure Simpson, who in the year 2000 was psychological distance; of how the city location much in the manner of the great Visiting Artist at the American Academy can be seem as icily aloof and inaccessible fabulist writer Bruno Schulz, who immor- in Rome, brings his particular visual poet- as a kingdom of dreams from just a few talized the small Polish village where he ry to bear not only on the concrete miles away—at least to those who do not spent his entire life by virtue of his pecu- canyons of midtown and the glittering partake in its power and its glamour. liarly heightened receptivity. Simpson pos- skyline of Manhattan, but also on the Evocative as the painting is, however, it sesses a similar gift for finding the magic Hudson River Valley and Long Island is equally impressive for its formal quali- in the ordinary; yet unlike Schulz, whose shoreline in his solo exhibition at ties. For Allan Simpson does not strain for prose was deliberately florid, he tempers Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, 511 West atmosphere by exploiting the picturesque. his visual poetry with an austere formal- 25th Street. Entitled ism, even when he turns up “Urban Metaphors, chromatic volume, as he does Machine Nature and in “View of Maspeth.” Design,” the show can be In other pictures, such as seen from May 8 through “Tappen Zee” and 31, with a reception on “Kosciusko Bridge,” Simpson Thursday, May 15, from 6 employs flat clear color areas to 8 PM. in a more muted range to In the decades preceding build compositions with the advent––or perhaps one spare, clean forms that verge should say the explosion–– on abstraction, even while of Abstract Expressionism, capturing the specific qualities there was a vital strain of of places outside the city painting called American proper. By contrast, Scene. Its rural wing includ- “Midtown Manhattan” and ed Regionalists like Thomas “Night Light Manhattan” Hart Benton, Grant Wood, take us right into the belly of and Stuart Curry, while its the beast, so to speak. urban exponents encom- In the former painting, sky- passed Precisionists such as scrapers, steeples, and office Sheeler, Demuth, and even, towers overlap in a composi- for awhile, Georgia O’Keeffe tion that shows Simpson’s when she was painting her neo-precisionism at its most famous cityscapes. (Those plainspoken and severe, while two brilliant loners Edward the latter picture is a noctur- Hopper and Charles nal dazzler on a par with Burchfield also intersect some of O’Keeffe’s great noir with this loosely related cityscapes. In “Night Light group.) Although they were Manhattan,” the jeweled soon to be marginalized, lights of the city blink from these artists were as daring silhouetted buildings set and original in their own against a luminous red sky way as the action painters streaked with angular areas of who would usurp them, hav- “Midtown Manhattan” blue. With larger yellow flash- ing rejected European influ- es of light in the foreground ences to forge their own homegrown Rather, the poetic qualities in his paint- stylized in star-like patterns, this picture is modernism. ings are made more exquisite by restraint. simultaneously a romantic tour de force Allan Simpson, who grew up on a farm Here, the jaggedly delineated shapes and and a triumph of formal design. in Illinois and now lives in Long Island sober palette of grayed-down blues and Allan Simpson, who obviously learned a City, revives the spirit of the American earthier hues make one think of Clyfford good deal about how to orchestrate a Scene painters by virtue of his ability to Still’s uncompromising abstractions. composition with uninflected yet expres- gaze on the urban landscape with unjaded Indeed, the composition of Simpson’s sive areas of flat color from his former wonderment. Yet while the pristine archi- painting is similarly craggy and that its mentor at the Art Students League, Will tectural forms and the absence of figures forms simultaneously seem to recede in Barnet, emerges with this exhibition as in his compositions recalls aspects of perspective and advance to the picture one of our major iconographers of urban Precisionism, his pictures are pervaded by plane enhances the spatial tension. America. His work seems destined to sur- an atmospheric melancholy, a sense of A considerably more heightened palette vive for as long as the supreme subject peculiarly American longing that belongs enlivens “View of Maspeth,” with its that he has made his own. to him alone. blocky brown buildings and industrial ––Marie R. Pagano

8 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Process and Physicality in the Paintings of Missy Lipsett t seems safe to suppose that Clement longer agree on what is avant garde, when elements and forces. IGreenberg, that most unforgiving of all is permissible and open to semiotic That said, the main thrust of her work critics, would not find much to approve of interpretation, every sophisticated nonob- remains adamantly abstract in intent. One in contemporary art, given how the diverse jective artist attuned to the complexity of encounters her paintings as autonomous tendencies huddled under the umbrella of our age must now allow for this ambiguity. phenomena, which finally succeed most postmodernism tend to fly uniformly in the In the latter regard, Lipsett, who has dramatically in nonobjective terms. The face of all he championed as paramount in recently relocated her main studio from the viewer is swept along by the sheer energy progressive modern painting. Yet city to the country, is well aware that a cer- that Lipsett generates by applying skeins of Greenberg would probably be heartened tain sense of landscape has found its way color (quite densely layered to create depth by the audacity of Missy Lipsett, the title of into her compositions. Indeed, she wel- in some paintings, set sparely against the whose third New York white of the canvas in solo show announces others) with a stick, a itself like a bold banner stylus, a squirt bottle, or boiling down everything any suitable object that that Greenberg propa- comes immediately to gated to a single, pro- hand. She eschews foundly meaningful brushes as too conven- word in regard to the tional for her vigorous, art of painting: spontaneous approach, “Plasticity.” preferring to keep the Granted, in the con- “gesture” at arm’s text of Lipsett’s exhibi- length and avoid the tion, which can be seen personalizing cliché of at Pleiades Gallery, 530 the “brushstroke,” in West 25th Street, from order to imbue her sur- April 22 through May faces with a sense of 10 (with receptions on freshness and inevitabil- Thursday April 24 from ity. 6 to 8 PM and on While her composi- Saturday April 26 from tional dynamics are the 4 to 6 PM), the term real piece de resistance actually has two mean- in her work, Lipsett’s ings. The first and most colors––luminous yel- literal of these is that lows, brilliant reds, ver- Lipsett has employed dant green or blue plastic film, along with “Untitled” hues––can be quite her usual medium of acrylic (or polymer, comes the expansiveness that this brings to beautiful, especially when she applies them itself a form of plastic) on canvas, as a even her relatively smaller canvases and to the white ground with splashy fluidity. prominent element in her new series; the appears to concur–– to some degree any- In some of her more densely tactile canvas- second, and the one which would doubt- way–– with Willem de Kooning’s statement es, where the plastic film remains integral less be most meaningful to Greenberg, is (which a writer previewing her new work to the composition as a collage element, that Lipsett insists emphatically on empha- quoted to her recently) that the space in the translucent surface gives off glints of sizing the pure plastic values in her paint- most abstract painting “springs from land- captured light that spark another kind of ings, above and beyond illusion, explica- scape.” chromatic charge in concert with crusty tion, or anything else that could be inter- This sense of landscape space is further opaque pigmentations or more viscous preted as even nominally literary or anec- abetted by the crumpled plastic film that impastos built up with acrylic gel medium. dotal. Lipsett has affixed to some of her new can- In fact, as in the work of Jules Olitski Use of the term “plasticity” in an aes- vases as a formal, expressive, and tactile ele- and other color field painters, the particular thetic context dates back to 1931, when a ment, creating the feeling of a rugged or qualities of acrylic paints, a more modern group of abstract painters in Paris that even mountainous terrain, especially in medium than oils, are innate to Lipsett’s included Hans Arp, Frantisek Kupka and those compositions where it protrudes aesthetic. Often, she adds considerable others issued a statement calling for “pure- considerably out from the picture plane. quantities of water to these water-based yet ly plastic culture.” Yet its use by Missy Conversely, in other paintings in the new rugged and permanent pigments to Lipsett at this time seems almost as radical series the plastic wrap serves an entirely dif- increase their fluidity. Tilting the canvas a declaration that uncompromisingly ferent function when Lipsett peels it away, this way or that, she makes her colors pud- abstract painting can still be a viable leaving only an impression, as in a mono- dle and pool or run together in almost endeavor, as vital in the postmodern era as type; or else she employs it as a “masking” marbleized configurations or flow in in its original incarnation. device, to create hard edges where poured rivulets and elegant drips that add to the Indeed, one of the things Lipsett’s exhi- or dripped acrylic paint is prevented from sensual, matter-of-fact immediacy of her bition demonstrates is that the achievement reaching the canvas. Yet from these tech- compositions. of pure plasticity is especially challenging niques, too, a suggestion of land masses or Thus she achieves her ultimate plasticity, and stimulating today, given our general of a map-like delineation of topography capturing that alchemy by which process agreement at this late date that a certain emerges. And this is further enhanced by manifests as physical entity. This magical residue of allusion will invariably attach Lipsett’s liberal use of water to dilute her metamorphosis of movement into material- itself to even the most intently abstract acrylic pigments and create a sense of flow, ity, is what the art of Missy Lipsett is all works of art. In a time when we can no of flux akin to the movement of natural about. ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 Irving Barrett’s Layered Meanings and Harmonious Disparities ith their densely layered and often dis- poses the film hero John Wayne in his Wparate images and their sharp sense of “Green Berets” costume with Jimi Hendrix irony, the collages of Irving Barrett are so in his electric Afro and psychedelic finery. ostensibly postmodern that it would be An icon of patriotic machismo and an icon easy enough to liken him to David Salle and of hippie “peace and love” confront each other new wave wonders who emerged in other across the generation gap. Yet they are the 1980s. Barrett, however, is an artist with reconciled––at least visually–– by Barrett’s a more subtle and intimate sensibility. In collage technique, with its gridded surface in contrast to the overblown scale that we see which each tiny square contains a stylized in the work of Salle and others, his collages floral form, providing an abstract armature are generally of modest size, yet crammed of underlying geometry. “Timmy and Godzilla” 2002 with lively visual incident. In this regard, he A wry hint of the pomposity that often has more in common with the late Ray drives great artists is behind the title of ty between the images themselves, more Johnson, another highly original intimist another intricately wrought collage called than any mythic rivalry between them, that with a penchant for maximalism. “Crackpot Aspiring Men,” in which the creates the visual tension in the composi- “Dualities –– Studies in Confrontation mammoth egos of Salvador Dali and Pablo tion, as well as creating a sense of surreal and Connection” is the title that Barrett Picasso share a single cafe table. Each stares incongruities. Other collages, such as attaches to his new exhibition in the style out of the picture with dark Spanish eyes, as “Descent from the Skateboard,” “Two that he calls “Dada-Pop-Surrealist,” which if blind to the presence of the other, as Soldiers,” and “Couples,” embed imagistic can be seen at Noho Gallery in Chelsea, strange biomorphic forms float through the incongruities within vibrantly colorful grids 530 West 25th Street, from April 22 air and the entire rippling surface appears to to optically dazzling effect. through May 10. crackle with the electricity of their rivalry. In his new collages, as well as paintings According to the artist, “The starting Implicit in Barrett’s parody of these two such as “Two Towers,” a complex diptych point of departure for this show concept is giants of Modernism is the sense that their juxtaposing images from 9/11 with disem- the drawing, painting and/or collaging of monolithic male chauvinist contest would bodied human skulls and the outlines of the two divergent and/or related items, figures, be comically passé in the current political destroyed towers, Irving Barrett succeeds animals, portrait busts, etc., together on the and aesthetic climate. splendidly in confronting a host of intrigu- same surface in juxtaposition to suggest a Considerably more lighthearted is the ing dualities. His paintings and collages are potential relationship between the two comic rivalry between a cartoon character visual conundrums to which there is no real items.” and a toy dinosaur figurine in “Timmy and need to find an answer. We can simply savor “Jimi and the Duke,” for example, juxta- Godzilla.” Here it is the sheer visual dispari- them at face value. ––Maureen Flynn The Imaginative Independence of Emile Snellen van Vollenhoven “ am totally ‘free-form,’ a free human tributes unerringly to the atmospheric quali- uct of two cultures, East and West, being Ibeing,” declares Emile Snellen van ties of his fantastic landscapes. Indo” yet hailing from the Netherlands, Van Vollenhoven, whose exhibition of paintings Indeed, van Vollenhoven’s unconvention- Vollenhoven often includes deliberately was recently seen at Montserrat Gallery, 584 al, apparently autodidactic approach exotic Asian motifs in his paintings. While Broadway, in Soho. “My work takes on empowers his “free-form” aesthetic, such images might be seen as kitschy chi- abstract, figurative and surrealistic dimen- enabling him to pull off formal and symbol- noiserie in the work of a less unique artists, sions. All the work is subject to symbolism ic juxtapositions that would daunt a tradi- van Vollenhoven’s lack of irony imbues and each paintings is my signature.” tionally trained painter. This seems especially them with an odd imaginative authenticity. As his statement indicates, van evident in “The Buddha,” where several Although some of van Vollenhoven’s Vollenhoven is that rare thing, a sophisticat- smaller human figures appear as apparitions visual stories summon deep subconscious ed outsider totally unbeholden to art world within the large figure of the deity, as well as archetypes and situations suggesting spiritual trends. His work fits neatly into no known in “The Journey,” in which a white robed yearning through a combination of imagery categories; besides drawing and painting, he wizard presides over a nocturnal realm with at once mythic and psychological, others writes poetry, haiku, and stories, as well as a nude female figure and large looming evoke a more down to earth sensuality with composing music and playing guitar. faces of a decidedly supernatural cast. In van equal conviction, as seen in “Dreaming a “On the first of April 2001 I deliberately Vollenhoven’s private imaginative world, Dream,” which depicts a comely female chose my life,” van Vollenhoven adds histri- such anomalies present themselves as per- nude sprawling languorously with a small onically. “I was ready to present myself as fectly natural, and the viewer is able to sus- green lizard crawling along her collar bone. Creative Artist.” pend disbelief by virtue of the artist’s ability By contrast, van Vollenhoven unites the This statement, implying the mysterious to meld them seamlessly within the self- spiritual and the sensual in “Woman Inside,” decision to follow a calling, is much in keep- determined perimeters of a highly peculiar where another nude figure, adorned with a ing with the visionary spirit of his paintings. compositional logic. glimmering gold necklace painted with However, it is obvious from the technical One of van Vollenhoven’s most appeal- metallic pigment is juxtaposed with both finesse that he has evolved even within an ingly visionary pictures in his recent exhibi- the Bible and the Koran. ostensibly primitivistic style that van tion at Montserrat was “Children of Emile Snelllen van Vollenhoven is an artist Vollenhoven has been honing his technique Nature,” in which willowy nude female so thoroughly attuned to his own inner in private for a long time. For while his fig- bathers are seen wading among tall stalks of vision that it seems quite impossible to clas- ures hardly reveal academic training in clas- bamboo in a landscape where the smaller sify him in any historical or currently popu- sical anatomy, they are sensual and convinc- stooped figure of an old-fashioned Oriental lar context. His work is indeed “free-form,” ingly expressive. In addition, his paint sur- sage in a pointed straw hat is seen traversing and that is its saving grace. faces are succulent and his color sense con- hills in the distance. A self-described “prod- ––Byron Coleman 10 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Brown Hagood: The “American Sublime” at Giverny here is a quote from Paul Valery that and often even by barge, searching for new theatrical presentation, in some ways anti- Tthe painter Brown Hagood first heard scenery with those precise qualities of color thetical to the science of pure visual sensa- many years ago from Morton Kaish, his and light that we see in his paintings. tion that the Impressionists sought, Hagood teacher at the Art Students League, that is “But we always end up making our annu- introduces an element of that raw romanti- never far from his easel: al ‘pilgrimage’ to Giverny,” says Hagood, cism that the writer Andrew Wilton refers to “Let us imagine that the sight of the who was featured in a 1991 article in as “the American sublime.” things that surround us is not familiar, that American Artist magazine called “Special Then there is “Stormy Skies, Versailles,” a it is allowed to us as an exception, and that Report: Learning from Monet.” smaller painting that is about as far from we only obtain by a miracle, knowledge of Brown Hagood revisits those magnificent Monet’s manner as one can get, in its clearly the day, of human beings, of the heavens, of gardens, among other locations in France, delineated depiction of the severe geome- the sun...What would we say about these in the new oils featured in his new solo tries of the formal gardens, with their pris- revelations, in what terms would we speak show, “France and Flowers,” at the Gregg tine walkways, manicured lawns, maze of of this wonderfully adjusted data? What and Marquis Galleries at National Arts crew-cut hedge-rows, and mathematically would we say of this distinct, complete, and Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, from May 7 spaced trees. Upon all this manmade order, solid world, if this world only appeared to us through 17. Hagood imposes the natural chaos of storm very occasionally...?” One of the two large canvases that serve clouds roiling up like thick purplish smoke On encountering Hagood’s paintings, as the dual centerpieces of the exhibition, above the magnificent palace that once one can see immediately that this quote had “Rose Trellis Path, Giverny,” is a tour de served as the royal residence, filling the a profound affect on him; for he paints with force of chiaroscuro. It boasts a shimmering entire sky with upcurved strokes as physical- an exuberant, sparkling freshness of vision. vortex of a composition that draws one in ly palpable as the tactile pigmentations of Indeed, only an artist the hedge-row zigzag- confident of his abili- ging along the bottom ty to respond to foreground of the nature not only as composition. though seeing it for This and other views the first time, but as of Versailles offer a though it had never sharp contrast to the been painted before, shimmering liquidity of would dare to tread Hagood’s Giverny pic- the garden paths of tures, where forms dis- Monet at Giverny solve in juicy strokes confident that he akin to those of that would produce pic- other fine contempo- tures worthy of rary realist Neil respect in their own Welliver. In “Morning right, as Hagood has Sun at the Pond, done regularly for Giverny,” the other some years now. large centerpiece of the Not that Hagood show, the reflections is arrogant enough on the pond and the to challenge the mas- leafy trees soaring ter on his own turf, skyward in graceful mind you. Quite the “Rose Trellis Path, Girverny” arcs are limned with contrary, he possess- the same luminous es the humility to keep his own counsel by virtue of its almost visionary treatment of limpidity and airy lyricism. with nature, knowing that any artist who the sun-saturated foliage swirling with While a picture centering on waterlilies is wishes to paint it truthfully must approach it flame-like virulence around the trellis and a perilous undertaking for any contempo- on its own terms, learn from direct observa- into the earth below. Rows of red, pink, rary painter visiting this sacred site, Hagood tion of its many moods, and devise his own yellow, and purple flowers on both sides add acquits himself admirably in “Water Lilies, way to translate them into the foreign lan- further to the chromatic intensity. Willow Reflection, Giverny,” where an guage of pigment on canvas. Only through The luminous organic conflagration at the upside down willow tree and bits of blue this alchemy can one give that which is center of the canvas is bracketed all around sky and white cloud are mirrored under lily ethereal material form. the edges by equally intense strokes of dark- pads floating on the glassy-smooth surface Hagood, who grew up in Evergreen, er hues, evoking lush overhanging branches of the pond. Here, even while his brush- Alabama, and now lives and has his studio in and the shadows that they cast on the grass, work retains a lively fluidity, Hagood brings Poughkeepsie, New York, also cites his as though one is viewing the trellis from the a crystalline clarity strictly his own to this French aunt, Marguerite Fournials, a pro- sheltering embrace of a large tree, thus pro- familiar subject. tégé of Guirad de Scovola, as another early viding the viewer with the best of two It takes a strong painter indeed to tackle influence. He took to heart and continues worlds: a beautiful summer day savored such subjects without succumbing to imita- to heed a bit of advice she gave him many from within a shady oasis. tion or sacrificing his own aesthetic identity. times over: “Il faut faire vibrer les couleurs By such dramatic compositional contrasts, Brown Hagood’s gem of an exhibition, et la lumiere!” (“You must make the colors so unlike the diffused surfaces of which also includes several other major and light vibrate!”) Impressionism, Brown Hagood asserts his French landscapes and a series of vibrant flo- Toward this end, Hagood and his wife, bold American identity and claims his inde- ral still life compositions, finds an accom- Monique, also an artist, spend several several pendence from the French giant whose spir- plished contemporary realist at the top of weeks each year in France, traveling by car, it haunts these gardens. Indeed, by such his form. ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 Natsu Takahashi Reinvents the “Crazy Quilt” as Art rom Kishio Suga’s sculptures in paraffin, anything else that can some- Fto Masunobu Yoshimura’s stuffed pig how be sewn or otherwise with ham slices hanging off its rear (created affixed to fabric. three decades before British bad boy At the same time, there is a Damien Hirst’s sliced cow), to Yayoi good deal more to her work Kusuma’s pieces made with airmail stickers than the novelty value that and installations of egg cartons, contempo- accrues from the use of odd rary Japanese and Japanese-American artists and unusual materials. have always been innovative in their use of Takahashi is a magnificent materials. colorist, for one, and her None, however, has explored the “crazy pieces compel one with the quilt”––an anything goes fiber crafts medi- complexity of their designs. um to which various objects are often added In both chromatic and formal that peaked in popularity in America during terms, her pieces are dazzling, the Victorian period––as a medium for fine “Ribbon Party” particularly the large work she art as successfully as Natsu Takashi, whose Piecework,” as to offer a recipe: “Collect calls “Face Off,” which is sus- solo show can be seen at Cast Iron Gallery, a quantity of scraps and ribbon, brocade, pended from the gallery wall by a rod in the 159 Mercer Street, May 24 to June 10. satin, velvet, plush and silk. If the pieces manner of both a traditional scroll and a Born in Kochi prefecture, in Japan, are small and odd in shape, so much the modern shower curtain (that its presenta- Takahashi now resides in California after liv- better...” tion could resemble either is totally in keep- ing for a time in the Northeast. Since the It would take a scholar far more diligent ing with Takahashi’s style, which is at once move her colors have grown brighter, she than the present writer to determine stately and casual, elegant and funky). says, adding, “It’s probably because of the whether the crazy quilt actually originated in The pieces Natsu Takashi shows at Cast sun, since I choose colors and patterns in Japan or whether this is some naive figment Iron Gallery are sumptuous in color, the natural daylight.” of the Victorian imagination, which tended intricate in design and tactile. Some are According to Robert Bishop, an associate to “exoticize” aspects of Asian culture. composed with regular patterns in a grid, for Antiques Monthly, there is a Japanese Either way, one thing is certain: Natsu while others are comprised of bolder, less connection to the crazy quilt that dates back Takahashi has added her own wrinkle, so to symmetrical areas of color. All reveal Natsu to the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 speak, to the crazy quilt in order to elevate Takashi to be an artist with her own unique when “a Japanese house and related displays it to the level of fine art with her “crazy aesthetic and approach to materials. sparked a taste for anything Oriental.” patchworks.” Takahashi enlivens her pieces Victorian writer Almon C. Varney even with all manner of materials and objects, ––J. Sanders Eaton went so far, in an article called “Japanese including metal and plastic plates, as well as The Conceptual Rebirth of Heinz Gerber’s “Nymphaeum” ll great works of art exist in a metaphys- the conceptual sensibility behind even his Aical space and a realm of time that tran- most physically imposing productions frees scends the limitations of the physical world. him from materiality in a manner that made Once such a work of art has been created it possible to convey the spiritual substance and documented, its spirit and its metaphys- of a large, no longer extant sculptural proj- ical meanings can never truly be destroyed, ect originally shown in Solothurn, even when the work itself ceases to exist on Switzerland, in 1984 and in a New York the physical plane. gallery in 2003. This was demonstrated most powerfully in The “Nymphaeum” that Gerber original- “Layers 6” a recent exhibition by the internationally ly exhibited in Switzerland was created with graphic representations go beyond resurrect- renowned Swiss-born artist, ceramicist, and a pyramidal block containing a wooden ing the spirit of the original exhibition. industrial designer (under the pseudonym water retainer which, as described by the Rather, presented in eight poster-size seg- C.H. Clayberg) Heinz Gerber, at critic Fred Zaugg, of Berne, “could be ments, they create an almost cinematic Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, in Soho. interpreted as a small temple. The simple sequence sense of a metaphysical terrain of Since 1970, Gerber has been creating a beam construction includes a narrow open- transformation. Here, as Fred Zaugg points thematic cycle of sculptural works that have ing, a slit, out of which water flows into a out, poetically, in an essay accompanying the been featured in exhibitions, events, and wooden channel, supported by a clay base.” exhibition at Montserrat, “the source happenings in Germany, Switzerland, The rebirth of Gerber’s “Nymphaeum” in returns to its origins in glaciers and clouds, France, Italy, England, the United States his exhibition at Montserrat was accom- thus completing the cycle of time, while on and elsewhere worldwide. Of the materials plished by means of photographs of the the other, clay –– as a symbol of the Earth employed and his aesthetic and intellectual original sculptural installation superimposed and life on our planet –– is joined to the sky intentions, he has stated succinctly, “In the over colored pencil drawings that the artist and cosmos. The work which was under- confrontation of wood and metal, concrete made from the cockpit of an airplane in stood as a temporary creation when it was and water with clay, I displayed forms and which he was flying over the Valais alps and made, is thus released from the restraints of deformations that stand in place for our then reproduced as large, inkjet prints on time.” The holy site known in ancient times human situation.” paper . The sculpture creates the sense of as the Nymphaeum, the home of the For the breadth and complexity of his monumental architectural forms soaring “source nymphs,” was transformed into a vision, Gerber can only be compared to the heavenward out of a rough, mountainous powerful contemporary statement in this German painter Anselm Keifer. Yet terrain. With the sculpture looming against transcendent exhibition by Heinz Gerber, Gerber’s work is concerned with more uni- the backdrop of an aerial landscape that focused on a metaphysical space between versal themes than Norse mythology and Gerber sketched from the cockpit, these earthly and heavenly terrains. –-Peter Wiley

12 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 The “Circus Maximalism” of Barbara K. Schwartz hen we hear the word “circus,” we her images of aerialists, jugglers, and acro- image is the fact that the orbs the figure Wnormally think of more or less mod- bats–– are employed to approximate the juggles are circular mirrors, in which the ern entertainments involving clowns, sense of disequilibrium that the news viewer sees fragmented parts of him or equestrians, aerialists, and acrobats, in the media subjects us to with its daily, often herself. manner of those presented by Ringling distorted, reports of terrorism, war, and Just as clearly reflected in another work Brothers Barnum & Bailey. However the other atrocities. At the same time, her entitled “The Clowns Fill Up the Entire term actually originated in Screen” is the artist’s dis- ancient Rome as the gust with the blow-dried Circensian games, brutal talking heads of television gladiatorial contests termi- news and the politicians nating in the deaths of the with whom they conspire losing participants that to create absurd distortions took place within a circular of reality. Here, the painted arena thronged by blood- features of a clown emerge thirsty spectators. forcefully from a composi- Barbara K. Schwartz tion that is equally striking sees elements of both cir- in formal and symbolic cuses––the clownish frivoli- terms, with its figurative ty of Barnum and Bailey fragments set within rough- and the mindless violence ly geometric color areas of the Roman that update the dynamism games––reflected in the of the Russian television news and news- Constructivists. paper coverage of the ter- Such strong formal quali- rorism and warmongering ties invariably keep that increasingly shadows Schwartz’s compositions our lives. from getting bogged down Thus, Schwartz has titled in the illustrational bywa- her most recent body of ters of Social Realism, no works in mixed media matter how directly she “Circus Maximus,” and addresses specific issues. employed circus imagery Her ability to captivate us to symbolize the danger- in purely visual terms, even ous duplicity of present- while juggling a complex day politics in her powerful range of personal symbols new solo exhibition at and meanings, is especially Viridian Artists @ Chelsea, evident in “The Big 530 West 25th Street, Picture,” where Xerox from April 29 through copies of her drawings, May 17. intricately patterned gift Characteristically, this wrapping paper, and other widely exhibited artist collage elements are com- employs a range of mixed bined with vigorous gestur- media, including oils, oil al strokes of color to evoke crayons, acrylics, and gold performers under the Big leaf on archival quality Top and multitudinous paper and museum board, spectators in a sweeping to create her memorable “Giant Clowns & Little People” 23" H X 19" W composition that suggests visual metaphors. She also so much more than its adds found objects (such as the tiny fig- mastery of classical composition enables ostensible subject. urines in “Giant Clowns & Little her to maintain a sense of balance that Schwartz’s multileveled symbolism People”), along with fragments of draw- makes her paintings aesthetically appeal- comes to the forefront yet again in ings in ink, graphite, and charcoal. ing––even when she proceeds with the “Caged Space I,” where photocopy Although classically trained and possessed seemingly reckless daring of an aerialist images of prowling tigers, bits of suede, of surpassing draftspersonly abilities, she performing without a net. roofing tiles, and other diverse collage often subjects her exquisitely drawn fig- Medium and message meld to create elements are combined with the figure of ures to radical deconstruction to avoid edgy pictorial tensions that add new an animal trainer created with twisted predictability, defeat conventional compo- meaning to Hans Hofmann’s famous wire. That the fierce beasts roam freely sitional habits, and imbue her pictures term “push and pull,” in Schwartz’s while the negative spaces within the wire with a stunning immediacy. The drama is phantasmagorical circus maximalism. In figure suggest an empty cage raises often heightened by her penchant for set- “The Supreme Juggler, ” for one splendid intriguing questions. That she invariably ting brilliant colors against dark grounds example, abstract swirls of movement as leaves such questions unanswered, howev- to produce a peculiarly theatrical effect. graceful yet muscular as the linear forms er, is what makes the art of Barbara K. Such methods are especially effective in in Brice Marden’s “Cold Mountain” Schwartz so open-ended, mysterious, and the present series, where fragmentation series surround a sinister master of dexter- ultimately fascinating. and striking shifts in scale ––particularly in ity. Adding to the ominousness of the ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 Celebrating the Brush at New York Open Center for either skill at an early age. But that it can Ridge Mountains” and “Through My be rare exceptions was demonstrated by the Window,” a combination of luminous and three artists featured in the Neiman exhibi- somber colors create magical atmospheres. tion “A Celebration of the Brush,” at New In other paintings, such as her “Province” York Open Center Tea House Gallery, 83 series, she brings cobblestone courtyards Spring Street, through April 12. and archways that might have appealed to It is not enough, however, for a Western the Impressionists alive in her own unique artist merely to master Eastern brush tech- manner and medium. niques. He or she must also bring some- The third artist, Eva G. Mihovich, is espe- thing unique to the art, in order to accom- cially adept in line, which she employs with plish more than a trick of cultural mimicry. admirable facility, velocity and spareness, Fortunately, John Dilgen, Eva G. Mihovich, proving the old saw that less can sometimes and Carol Itzkowitz Neiman, the three be more––particularly in ink painting. artists featured here, each bring a great deal Mihovich’s “The Heavenly Horse” cap- of themselves and their own cultural her- tures the grace and beauty of its equine sub- itage to the paintings. ject with fluid strokes, while “The Arabian “I am an artist in the Sumi-E tradition,” Horse” is a more tonally varied composition declares John Dilgen in an artist’s statement and adds, “I am an American artist in my own time.” And Dilgen makes John Dilgen clear that those two sentences or a Western artist, mastering Asian are in no way Fbrush techniques can be a daunting dis- contradictory by cipline, since wielding a brush to practice combining calligraphy is as foreign to Western culture salient features of as eating with chopsticks, and, unlike people both Eastern and raised in Eastern cultures, occidentals do Western tech- Carol Itzkowitz Neiman not normally develop the manual dexterity niques to forge a strong personal style. focusing on the curve of the animal’s neck One of the most dramatic examples of this and its majestic head. Both paintings are crosscultural synthesis can be seen in notable for their dynamic monochromatic Dilgen’s painting “November Wind,” a simplicity. Yet Mihovich is also a formidable work in Sumi ink and watercolor that colorist, as seen in her vibrant and fresh merges the linear grace and velocity of Asian studies of floral subjects set crisply against ink painting with the coloristic richness of the white of the paper, as well as in her Daniel Ludwig Western Expressionism. Graceful black tree more darkly saturated pictures such as limbs are overlaid by splashy dots of color ‘Dusk,” a shadowy atmospheric tour de force. that cover them like a dense rain of confetti, creating an exhilarating overall effect. A similar subject is treated more mono- chromatically in Dilgen’s “Full Moon PAINTINGS, Bloom,” where the bold composition has a spareness akin to Zen literati painting. By DRAWINGS contrast, “Catskills” transfigures a landscape in upstate New York into a classic Chinese & SCULPTURE landscape by virtue of his vigorous black brushstrokes set against gray and pale blue washes. Carol Itzkowitz Neiman, another gifted through May 7, 2003 brush artist, employs Sumi ink and water- color on fibrous paper in generally smaller formats to create paintings notable for their intense colors and visionary poetry. Eva G. Mihovich Although working with Asian materials and exploiting their ethereal qualities most Like the other two artists in this gem of a Allan Stone Gallery effectively, Neiman’s landscapes share certain show in one of New York City’s leading qualities in common with the great English venues for holistic and New Age studies, 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 painter J.M.W. Turner, as well as the Eva G. Mihovich contributes a vibrant con- Tel. 212.987.4997 Fax. 212.987.1655 American visionary Albert Pinkham Ryder. temporary sensibility to a venerable aesthetic In Neiman’s paintings “Sunset –– Blue tradition. ––Marie R. Pagano

14 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Form and Humanism in the Bronzes of Amy Bright Unfried

hile trends in art come and go, By contrast, “Winged Victory” Wthose artists who have stead- spans time in a different manner, for fastly refused to abandon the figure while the headless green patina’d belong to a great tradition of figure with flowing robes and out- humanism that extends from Ancient spread wings suggests classical antiq- Greece through the Renaissance to uity, here Unfried’s more generalized the present. Amy Bright Unfried, treatment of form and roughly ges- who lives and works in Wyoming but tural modeling is contrastingly exhibits here so frequently that one abstract. almost tends to think of her as a Along with a variety of figures New York artist, surely belongs to expressing a wide range of moods this tradition, for she is as whole- and emotions, this exhibition also heartedly committed to the human features sculptures from the “Tree figure as any contemporary artist Series,” begun in 2001, when could be. Unfried started casting small branch- Although she has also worked in es directly in bronze to create fanciful more abstract modes at various times miniature trees adorned with leaves in her career, and these sojourns into and blossoms and inhabited by crea- more modernistic modes of expres- tures such as butterflies, birds, and sion have doubtless contributed to squirrels. her experience and proficiency as an By 2003, these pieces had devel- artist, it is in classical realism that oped more anthropomorphically to Unfried finds her most enduring symbolize the unity of humans and inspiration for her sculptures in that their environment, culminating in the most enduring of mediums, personification seen in “Tree Series bronze.The aesthetic benefits that II: Pas de Deux,” where two slender she has reaped from her unswerving saplings in close proximity suggest devotion to her subject, which has willowy dancers. preoccupied her since the 1980s, can Even trees, apparently, lead Amy be seen in her newest solo exhibition Bright Unfried back to her abiding “Three Ways of Looking at the fascination with the human figure as Figure,” at the National Arts Club, the ultimate subject for her fertile 15 Gramercy Park South, from aesthetic explorations. April 17 through May 1, with a ––J. Sanders Eaton reception on Tuesday April 22, from 6 to 8 PM. “Persephone” Modeling her figures for casting by sculpture alone. the lost wax process gives Unfried the In a more overtly classical mode are fig- Dreaming Between immediacy and freedom that she needs to ures such as “Spindle Back Chair,” a sen- imbue her bronzes with their characteristic sual seated female nude, and “Dreamer,” a East & West sense of movement and emotional expres- semi-reclining male nude with arms rest- siveness. And while her figures are ing on a cushion suspended in space. In anatomically accurate in the classical man- the former, a pale green patina enhances Rose Sigal Ibsen ner, her pieces are not polished smooth by the flowing sense of unity that distinguish- Oriental Paintings & Calligraphy machine tools after being cast in limited es the piece, while in the latter the con- editions in the foundry. Rather, the fin- trasts between the pale green figure and and ished bronzes retain subtle marks made the black seat and cushion directs our by the artist’s hands and tools as the pieces attention to the intriguingly metaphysical Albert Dov Sigal take shape in clay, which not only balancing act of a man leaning into empty enhances their ability to catch light but space. By such means Unfried emphasizes Daniel M Sigal lends them an added tactile vitality. the differences in the two figures, one pro- Paintings & Enamels That Unfried often combines different jecting a sense of reposeful serenity, the colored patinas in a single piece for a poly- other an edgy spatial tension. recently exhibited at the chrome effect also adds an element of The range of expressiveness in Unfried’s painterliness to some of her pieces, as seen work can also be studied by juxtaposing THE ROMANIAN in the bronze she calls “Pomona.” This the portrait head “Grandfather,” with the animated piece depicts a slender yet shape- wall relief “Persephone.” While one is a CULTURAL CENTER ly young woman dancing, her hands above down-to-earth depiction of a modern man 573 - 577 Third Avenue, NYC 10016 her head as though frozen in the act of and the other a figure of myth, the two 212 687 0180 clapping. That her body-hugging dress is a achieve equanimity in the timeless medium shimmering green hue, while her skin is a of bronze. Indeed, the elderly gentleman warm brown and her hair has a brilliant could easily be an ancient senator, while To vew the artists’ works black patina, gives the piece the rich picto- the young woman, her “big hair” adorned by appointment: rial evocativeness of a painting, even while with various ornaments, could be a mod- 212-979-2459 retaining the volumic palpability and phys- ern teenager dolled-up for the dis- ical presence in space that belongs to cotheque. APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 Soho Solos: Hesketh, Krejsova, Andranowski, and Lagunes esting the boundaries between figu- one, in keeping with Hesketh’s belief Then there is Maria Lagunes, a gifted Tration and abstraction,Gary Hesketh that it is the job of the artist to address sculptor whose work can also be seen in recently exhibited a group of strong “the rational and the abstract” and “rec- the same venue’s year-round salon exhi- black and white paintings at Montserrat oncile the seeming incompatibility of the bition. Lagunes’ bronzes are composed Gallery, 584 Broadway. two.” Indeed, this is one of the issues at of clusters of wavering forms, enlivened Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1950, the crux of postmodern art and Gary by negative spaces within, that simulta- educated at Champlain College and The Hesketh appears to be a painter deeply neously seem to suggest a sense of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of involved with its solution. organic growth and decay. Her furled Art & Design, Hesketh has stated, “In Laura Krejsova, a Czech painter now shapes flare upward like flames or under- my new paintings I am expressing a exhibiting regularly in New York, also sea plant life, filled with a sense of move- revived discovery and relationship with made a strong impression with a recent ment and energy, suggesting not only the patterns of nature.” In the paintings show in the same venue, revealing a natural phenomena but the hidden forces seen at Montserrat the aspect of nature good deal of variety and virtuosity with behind them. in which Hesketh found patterns to subjects ranging from a snow scene, to Lagunes appears acutely attuned to explore was the female body and it fanciful figure compositions with a fairy- the role of sculpture in art as a steadying proved a fertile field for discovery. tale quality, to paintings of great cosmic influence amid the clamor and Broadly brushed in black on a white expanses filled with a sense of awe and contention created by the constantly ground, a brunette model in black bra mystery. shifting styles of its sister art, painting. and bikini panties struck casually seduc- Krejsova is an intrepid young painter Her pieces have a stolid presence and tive poses on a plane white field. While whose willingness to take risks pays off a sense of inevitability, like the aspects the figure was depicted in a convincingly handsomely in compositions such as of nature from which they spring. realistic manner, the boldness of “Earthrise Above the Moon,” which as Although abstract, they are possessed Hesketh’s brushwork broke the composi- its title indicates, wittily reverses the nat- of a classical calm that soothes and tions down into areas that could also be ural order in which we earthlings are comforts the viewer. read as abstract patterns. The energetic accustomed to viewing things. ––Maureen Flynn execution added to the gestural power of Also seen recently at Montserrat the pictures, with vigorous slashes of Gallery were works by Barbara FINE ART PACKAGING black reminiscent of Franz Kline’s mono- Andranowski, whose “Baya Bottles” are chromatic abstract expressionist canvases. unique art objects that close the gap • Shipping Supplies “It struck me after I had begun this between sculpture and fetishism. (wholesale & retail) new work that the new paintings were as Encrusted with gemlike fragments, they close to music as a visual medium could have a tactile oddness akin to the chair • Private Mail Box get,” Hesketh recently stated, and covered with safety pins and other • Lamination indeed these pictures are musical in their objects with which Lucas Samaras made • Free Estimate rhythmic sweep and a sense of improvisa- his reputation in the 1960s. Like tional immediacy akin to jazz. Hesketh Samaras, Andranowski imbues familiar Mailboxes & Beyond Inc breaks the female form down into objects with an almost disturbing beauty. 217 E. 85 St., NYC 10028 severely simplified areas of abstract form, The bottle, a familiar prop of still life even while retaining its innate sensuality. composition takes on an exotic quality in Mailboxes Plus Inc Thus the paintings succeed simultane- her work, like tribal relics whose ceremo- 50 Lexington Ave ously as formal and pictorial terms, mak- nial uses elude us but whose aesthetic 212 772 7909 212 439 9109 ing them compelling in more ways than qualities are undeniable. Tel: / Fax: PINO CHIMENTI SHELTERS March 15-April 15, 2003

Hermetic Microcosms Barbara Bachner • Maria Rebecca Ballestra Fiorenzo Belfiore • Massimo Franchi April 15 - May 6, 2003 Giovanni Garasto • Clara Scarampella Giorgio Tonti • Vincenzo Torcello • Pino Vastarella Reception: Curated by Stefania Carrozzini Tuesday, April 15, 6 p.m. MONIQUE GOLDSTROM GALLERY Curator: 560 Broadway, Suite 303 Stefania Carrozzini New York, N.Y. 10012 212 941 9175 Fax 212 274 8650 [email protected] www.moniquegoldstrom.com -www.ilsephoto.com

16 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Vincent Arcilesi in Morocco: Postmodernism Meets Omar Khayyam atmospheres of the places Further enlivened by cumuli like cotton- he paints, just as he balls tossed against a clear blue sky, in remains faithful to the which the red flash of the Moroccan flag individual features and provides yet another piquant accent, this figures of his models. superbly choreographed composition Rather than stylizing his seduces the eye and stimulates the imagi- nudes as generic arche- nation on several levels simultaneously. types in the manner of Along with a baker’s dozen of the gem- less exacting realists, like plein air landscapes that Arcilesi invari- Arcilesi emphasizes their ably paints to acclimate himself to a new quirky modern beauty, locale, the Moroccan series includes two lifting the veil on art’s other major canvases. In “La Menara, artifice to remind us that Marrakesh,” an elaborately costumed the past masters he emu- palace guard is bracketed between and lates probably found dwarfed by two Amazonian nudes. models for their mythic Looming symmetrically as classical themes among the milk- columns against a low horizon where an maids and peasant girls of elegant nineteenth century pavilion is set their time. against a reflective lagoon under the sharp For all the meticulous peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the two stat- detail he invests in his pic- uesque beauties take on monumental pro- tures, Arcilesi’s brushwork portions. never gets fussy. His paint The third large canvas “Moroccan surfaces remain fresh and Odalisque” is an inevitable subject for a fluid, filled with the vitali- painter so smitten with art history. Only, ty of warm sunlight, soft Arcilesi’s harem scene denudes the pasha as flesh, and crystalline air, well as his concubine. Wearing only his as seen in “Al Badi Palace, turban, he stands beside her with his Marrakesh, 2002-03,” the prominent paunch and “family jewels” magnificent nine-by- unselfconsciously exposed. A voluptuous eighteen-foot centerpiece blond, she sits, legs slightly parted, exud- of his present exhibition ing the comfortable sexual confidence of a at Broome Street Gallery, spouse, rather than the diffidence of a slave 498 Broome Street, or a concubine. from May 13th through With the desert sands and palm trees “Al Badi Palace Marakesh,” left panel June 1st. visible through an arched doorway nearby, f not for the misleading onus of crimi- Here, Arcilesi merges two picturesque they seem as easeful and erotically attuned Inality it might invite, one would be sites in Marrakesh: tempted to call Vincent Arcilesi’s new The Majorelle exhibition of paintings “Gangs of Garden, a lush Morocco.” For like Martin Scorsese’s film botanical extravagan- “Gangs of New York,” this show, with its za owned by Yves St. large cast of characters, ornate settings, and Laurent, and Al Badi exotic costumes (at least in the case of Palace, once the those few figures that are clothed) is home of Sultan Arcilesi’s long-awaited epic. Ahmed el Mansour After catching our attention with paint- and now a majestic ings that monumentalized explicit acts of 16th century ruin. lovemaking, Arcilesi cemented his reputa- No less than eight tion as one of our most adventurous real- nude figures and ists with dreamlike scenes of comely nudes three costumed ones, and semi-nudes comporting themselves as including two casually as grazing cattle in public settings Moroccan musicians in the world’s great cities. in long robes and a In his Moroccan series, Arcilesi outdoes flamenco dancer himself, evoking an ornate sensuality remi- with her skirt aswirl, niscent of The Rubaiyat of Omar make up this com- Khayyam, even while maintaining the neo- plex scene. Their classical cool that makes his large multi-fig- ebony-to-ivory skin “Essaouira” ure compositions such impressive formal pigmentations sug- feats. gest the rich ethnic diversity of Morocco, as vacationing honeymooners, personifying Although he does not hesitate to take as they strike animated poses amid an array the audacious beauty that makes the poetic liberties, rearranging landscapes and of ornate Berber rugs, potted plants, lumi- paintings of Vincent Arcilesi so uniquely landmarks to suit his compositional whims, nous bathing pools, exotic architecture, appealing. Arcilesi unfailingly captures the specific and towering palm trees. ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 The Linear Lyricism of Ingrid Rosas t seems auspicious that the Mexican juxtaposed with thrusting vertical strokes merge and transcend her two mediums, to Ipainter Ingrid Rosas, who has published that suggest tall weeds. These elements are create a multidimensional form of expres- a collection of poetry entitled “Between enclosed within a border in which the artist sion that appeals to both sides of the brain Heaven and Exile,” is a writer as well as a has written out the following poetic text: simultaneously. visual artist, since her paintings not only “Wake up / Long is the way to heaven / At the same time, however, some of her incorporate words and phrases but also Thorns in the shadow / Wake up / Open paintings can stand on their own as visual gain their thrust from ecriture––that ges- the wings of your soul.” This exhortation, expressions, as seen in “Trail 4003,” a tural juncture at which handwriting and combined with the swiftly drawn imagery, work in oil and acrylic in which cursive painting meet and merge. has a directness and simplicity akin to the black calligraphic forms flow in rhythmic Widely exhibited in both Mexico and waves and are intersected by a vertical red Canada, Rosa’s recent exhibition at line that traverses the composition swiftly, Agora Gallery, 415 West Broadway, as though laid down in a single bold showcased an exquisite sensitivity to lin- stroke. Here, Rosa’ forceful gestural veloci- ear lyricism. Her mixed media paintings, ty recalls Jackson Pollock. By contrast, like those of the two American artists another work in mixed media, entitled Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, seem to “Encounter 4006,” achieves a more deli- spring from an Asian source, in that they cate lyricism, as well as an allusive symbol- are calligraphic rather than painterly in ism, with graffiti-like crosses and simplified the Western sense of the term. Rosas, floral forms scrawled onto a subtly modu- lated surface enlivened by areas of white however, does not by any means imitate “Trail 4003” Asian techniques or themes. Rather, she pigment scumbled over a tan ground. employs line as an autonomous expressive avant garde “picture poems” of Kenneth In these paintings, as well as the larger entity to convey a highly personal sensibili- Patchen and Bob Brown. Indeed, Rosas composition called “Chronos 4001,” ty through abstract means. achieves a similarly successful synthesis of notable for the tension the artist creates In some works, she effectively combines word and image, placing her in the artist between rhythmic linear shapes and a row word and image to especially poetic effect, lineage that includes medieval illuminators, of regular rectangular shapes, Ingrid Rosas much in the manner of the literati the great English visionary William Blake, employs her elegant ecriture to create com- painter/poets of ancient China and Japan. and the French surrealist poet Henri positions in which painting and poetry In the “Way to Heaven,” for example, Michaux. Like great such predecessors, meet and marry happily. floating forms resembling butterflies are Ingrid Rosas strives to simultaneously ––Gloria Feinberg Master Drawings from Italy at Gelabert t is always newsworthy when a commer- in common with the rhythmic treatment of of the French painter Icial gallery hosts an exhibition of museum the figures in “Fishermen giving the ring to Dughet. Here, De quality. Just such a show was “Disegni the Doge,” Bordone’s great painting in the Marchis demon- Italiani, XVI - XX secolo,” an exhibition of Accademia, in Venice. strates his command Old Master and somewhat more modern Another major work in the exhibition was of color and atmos- Italian drawings, recently presented in con- by Cristofano Roncalli (1551/52 – 1626), phere in a pastoral junction with Galleria Marcello Aldega, at called Il Pomarancio, an essentially self- scene capturing the Gelabert Studios Gallery, 255 West 86th taught artist who fused aspects of precise qualities of Street. Mannerism with his own ideas, executed early evening light. This show was a literal treasure trove of many prestigious fresco commissions, and At the same time, works on paper, including a magnificent became a favorite of the pontifical court. there is a sense of Christofano Roncalli drawing in pen and brown ink with traces of “Seated Male Prisoner with Trophies in the imagination and black chalk on tan paper by Baccio Background,” the large oil on paper, en gri- mystery in this exquisite little oil akin to the Bandinelli (1493–1560), a Florentine sculp- saille, in this exhibition demonstrates how much later work of the American visionary tor and pupil of Rustici who was much successfully Roncalli assimilated the influ- Albert Pinkham Ryder. favored by the Medicis. The drawing, enti- ences of Raphael and Michelangelo to forge Another anomalous little stand-out in this tled “Four Female Nudes,” its subject a rari- his own monumental and forceful style. The show was “Portrait of a Woman in Profile,” ty in Bandinelli’s oeuvre, is notable for its picture is remarkable for its command of a simple drawing in black charcoal by the fine crosshatchings and the languor of the monochromes to create an almost sculptural internationally renowned portraitist figures, reminiscent of the artist’s well sense of form. Giovanni Boldini (1842 – 1931). Although known work, “A Group of Standing Male Roncalli/Pomarancio was also represented Boldini knew Manet and Degas and Nudes,” at Christ Church, Oxford. in this show by “Flying Angel,” a masterful although the rapid brushwork and tonal The Italian painter Paris Bordone drawing in red chalk related to one of the range in his paintings was influenced by (1500–71), admired for his arresting por- figures in his painting “The Nativity,” in the Hals and Velasquez, the vivacity and the traits of women, as well as his narrative W.E. McConnell Collection, Stocksfield, sense of caricature in the this charming paintings of secular and religious subjects, Northumberland. sketch recalled Toulouse-Lautrec. was also well represented with “Man leaning One of the truly unusual works in the Also including splendid drawings by Forward with Arm Extended,” a drawing in exhibition, given its fully developed painterly Novelli, Testa, Leoni, Benso, Pippi, and his preferred medium of black and white qualities, was “Landscape with Buildings,” Bartolozzi, among others, “Disegni Italiani, chalk on blue paper. Although a pupil of an oil on paper by Alessio De Marchis XVI – XX secolo” was a landmark of the Titian for a time, he developed his own, (1684 - 1752 ), a Neapolitan landscape spe- season, beautifully installed in one of the more linear style. The drawing seen here, cialist primarily influenced by Dutch Upper West Side’s more elegant exhibition although bold and sketchy, shared qualities Italianate landscape artists and the late work spaces. ––J. Sanders-Eaton

18 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 The Sumptuous Food Paintings of Marie-Louise McHugh uch is the complexity of modern life that bland or mundane to Marie-Louise organic actors, rather than still lifes in any Sour relationship to food has evolved over McHugh, who invests the most ordinary conventional sense of the term. For one the past century or so from an obsession objects with a heightened significance by thing, most of the fruits are not seen on a with getting enough of it to stay alive to an virtue of her coloristic intrepidness and the tabletop, as is usually the case in nature obsession with making sure we don’t eat so sensual emphasis that she imparts to forms. morte. Rather, they are suspended against much that we kill ourselves––or, even worse, This is seen to particular advantage in the solid yet sumptuously modulated back- gain a few pounds and fall grossly out of “Pear,” which along with another sizable ground color as if in space, which lends the fashion. work called “Gourd” is an anomalously compositions a metaphysical rather than Eating disorders such as a anorexia (sys- large canvas in a show of mostly small pic- down-to-earth quality. tematic self-starvation) and bulimia (gorging tures. Its subject could not be simpler: a big, This sense of fantasy is pushed even fur- and purging) have reached epidemic pro- juicy yellow pear set against a vibrant red ther by the odd way that McHugh puts the portions, particularly among young women, we are advised avuncularly by the same mass media that seduces us with images of impossibly thin young models, many of whom apparently suffer from the syndrome themselves. The performance artist Vanessa Beercroft, who has made a career out of documenting her food obsessions, with which she has been struggling since adolescence, recently told a reporter for the New Yorker, “In the end, I don’t even care if people say I’m a good artist. I only care whether or not I’m fat.” What a refreshing relief it is, then, in this clinically dysfunctional climate of starving and gorging and purging and kvetching about body-image, to encounter the painter Mary-Louise McHugh’s wholesome and delectable solo show, “All About Food,” at Phoenix Gallery, 568 Broadway, from April 30 through May 24. And how refreshing it is as well to hear an artist talk about her work in a manner that is angst-free, direct, informative, and relevant “Fish & Polenta” to the paintings themselves, as McHugh does when she says, “My love for organic ground. The pear is painted in a perfectly objects together, as seen “Fish & Polenta,” shapes (pears, female nudes, cones, flowers) realistic manner, not in the least bit distort- where the large pink fish that dominates the led me to this new body of work. Last year, ed, yet its swelling curves are so femininely composition is arranged horizontally while working on a small family cookbook, I alluring that one cannot help but see its against two upright ears of corn with small started exploring simple images of food and broad bottom portion as a pair of shapely red pimentos at their bottoms resembling ended up creating a number of small still life buttocks. Not that McHugh puts too fine a pointed elf-shoes. As in one of the 17th paintings grouping ingredients for various point on this or strives for a sense of surreal century Milanese painter Giuseppe recipes, appetizers, entries and desserts. The metamorphosis or anything quite so tritely Arcimboldi’s fantastic heads composed of small size of my canvases allowed me to obvious as that. She is simply pointing out fruits, flowers and vegetables, the configura- explore the use of thicker and more textured how forms in nature tend to replicate them- tion takes on an anthropomorphic quality, application of paint. I wanted to create selves in different organic entities, and in as if the fish has grown legs and is about to luscious, colorful and sensuous small works doing so, she takes something very simple flee the composition before preparation for in oil.” out of the realm of the mundane and puts it dinner gets underway. While McHugh is also known for nudes into that of the fabulous. This is what paint- Other amusing readings can be given to celebrating full-figured womanly beauty, as ing, in its purest and most abstract form is other paintings, such as “Fish for Dinner,” well as surreal narrative compositions, here supposed to do, and McHugh succeeds in which two asparagus stalks lie across the she paints edibles exclusively, imparting to splendidly in making this “portrait” of a par- neck of a fish like pillories or the blade of a them an elusive and pregnant symbolism ticular pear an object of aesthetic delecta- guillotine; “Fish and Chips,” in which the that makes these small canvases fully as fasci- tion. She does this by virtue of the picture’s fish enters from the top of the composition nating as her larger, more complex composi- chromatic intensity and the sensuousness staring down dolefully at a pair of asparagus tions. Indeed, their intimate scale enhances that she lavishes not only on the fruit itself propped against a potato; and “3 her food paintings, which gain in intensity but that beautifully modulated red back- Pimentos,” in which the trio of peppers from close scrutiny. In this regard, her ground with her brush work. lines up against a luscious yellow ground approach is the opposite of that of Andy These qualities, which are foregrounded like a tap-dancing trio. Warhol, who when he painted objects such by the simplicity of the composition in But while it’s fun to speculate on what as the familiar soup can emphasized their “Pear,” also elevate the smaller paintings in they may mean, the real deliciousness in the mundane, everyday qualities as deadpan this show, where McHugh explores the new oils of Marie-Louise McHugh has to icons of consumerism. That was his whole more complex relationships between more do with their colors, forms, textures––the shtick, after all: bland is beautiful. By con- varied edibles with winning visual wit. These staples that nourish and sustain all good trast, nothing in the world appears to be paintings truly are staged dramas starring painting. ––J. Sanders Eaton

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 Catching Up with László Paizs, Hungary’s Greatest Living Artist, in Soho by trying to buy a pack of cigarettes with their American album or tour here again... American currency. Joe Laux, Locomtiv GT’s We can only be thankful that fine art has a drummer and his wife Anne Adami, who wrote the band’s lyrics, had to cough up the required forints and spirit me out of there in their Mercedes before a Ed McCormack (left) wih Anna, Joe, and the other members of Locomotiv riot erupted. GT backstage in Budapest. Later, as we recovered in an espresso bar in much longer shelf-life than rock music. Still, the Buda, the oldest and most beautiful part of László Paizs’ first American exhibition was the city, they told me how skittish the Ministry decades overdue and James Cavello, the co- of Culture was about popular youth music. The owner of Westwood Gallery, who curated it, couple were rock and roll royalty, filthy rich by can tell you that transcontinental culture shock socialist standards. They had the Mercedes, the is still alive and well in Budapest. much sought-after American-made jeans, the “The people were wonderful––I love the lizard skin boots, a palatial pad in the Buda–– Hungarian people––but some of the situations the whole megillah. Yet they constantly had to that we encountered there were absolutely be looking over their shoulders wondering unreal,” he told me, rolling his eyes heaven- when the Ministry was going to lower the ward. László Paizs “Standing Figure, No. 2” boom. They explained that in Hungary there “It’s almost as if some residue of paranoia were three cultural categories: Approved, left over from the communist era still haunts Although this column normally partakes of the Tolerated, and Banned. At present, rock and many of the people there,” Margarite Almeida, editorial “we,” being a collaborative effort with roll was Tolerated––but only to keep a lid on Cavello’s svelte, savvy business partner con- my wife and editor Jeannie McCormack, the kids, since no one was sure what they firmed. “They act really uptight about little chronicling sundry subjects encountered in our might do if the government took away their things that would seem insignificant to us. wanderings around the city, in this issue I will musical opiate. Like, if we wanted to order eggs after the break with tradition to relate a story from per- “Who knows?” Anna mused. “Maybe the breakfast hour, it seemed to cause consterna- sonal experience that may help to put into per- kids would take to the streets with molotov tion and even a certain amount of suspicion!” spective why four decades had to pass before cocktails, like in 1956, if the Ministry didn’t But despite some of the more harrowing László Paizs, Hungary’s greatest living artist, tolerate us! So we’re safe for now. But at any experiences––including a mad Magyar pilot could have his first U.S. exhibition, at moment that could change...” who insisted, harrowingly, on taking the two Westwood Gallery, in Soho. As it turned out, her forebodings were not visiting Americans touring in a rickety prop- Several years ago, before the collapse of com- all that far-fetched. For while I was able to driven aeroplane that Cavello terms “a vintage munism, Rolling Stone magazine, for which I watch the band play for a wildly enthusiastic antique”–– both agree that the trip was well wrote regular feature stories and a column young audience in Budapest the following worth it. And Cavello tells why in his curator’s called “New York Confidential” sent night, later in the week something ominous statement in the exhibition catalog: me to Hungary to write about a rock band happened: We traveled with the three other "When I first saw László Paizs’ painting in called Locomotiv GT, then commonly referred band members to a gig in a city called Miskolc, his studio in Budapest, Hungary, I felt like an to as “the Beatles of Budapest.” only to be greeted by hundreds of despondent explorer who had made a discovery.The paint- They were the first Iron Curtain band to sign young people milling about in the parking lot ings appeared to be modern day relics of a past with an American record label, RCA, and tour behind the darkened and locked concert civilization, partial figures excavated with heavy the States. But as luck would have it, one of hall.The gig had been mysteriously canceled, textured polyester and glimmering tones of their original members, landing in L.A. and and the band felt so sorry for their disappoint- pink, silvery or golden hues. I found myself deciding that it was Rock and Roll Heaven, ed fans that they told them I was a visiting contemplating each work of art. After a few had defected. Ever since, the Hungarian American rock star to whom they had been steps around the studio I saw an eerie light, a Supergroup had been grounded by the telling me I bore a striking resemblance, and red glow from embers floating within a block Ministry of Culture. Still, convinced that pub- had me forge his autograph to cheer the kids of plexiglass. Upon closer view, I noticed that licity could conquor even politics, and that up. they were actually the remains of burned pages Soviet Bloc Boogie was going to be the Next The next day, after returning from a meeting of books, some pages still appearing to be on Big Thing, Jann Wenner, the editor and pub- at the Ministry to which he had been hastily fire, trapped forever in a clear acrylic block. lisher of Rolling Stone, had scheduled the story summoned, Joe told us that the gig had been This work reflected a moment Mr. Paizs experi- for a cover piece. The plan was that I would go aborted because the officials did not think an enced during the 1956 revolution in front of a over first and get started on the story. Then, American journalist should see the inelegant bookstore in Budapest. He watched as classic Annie Leibovitz, with whom I had recently col- workers’ hall where the band was to play. After volumes of Marxist-Leninist books were laborated on a cover profile of the Jamaican other gigs were canceled and it became clear thrown onto the pavement and the piles were reggae star Bob Marley, would follow in a few that the Ministry was going to thwart all of my set aflame. In his words, it conjures the days to photograph the band. (This was some efforts to get my story, I called Jann and told moment into a 'conscious fossil.'" time before Leibovitz had such clout that, on him to save Annie’s air fare; I was coming Although not a man generally given to the strength of her reputation, a whole hunker- home... understatement, Cavello was putting it mildly ing herd of Hollywood leading men would The next day at the airport, as Anna and Joe when he told me recently that he also was gather in one place at one time to pose togeth- and I hugged goodbye and vowed to see each determined to show László Paizs’ work in er for a Vanity Fair group portrait. The world other soon in New York, I had the feeling that New York, because, “Here is a man who has didn’t come to Annie yet; Annie still went to my visit to Hungary may have hindered rather dedicated his entire life to his art and has had it.) than helped their chances of bringing Soviet to fight every step of the way to do it.” Minutes after I arrived in Budapest I caused Bloc Boogie back to the U.S.A. And as it After completing his studies at the College of considerable commotion in the airport simply turned out, Locomotiv GT never did release Applied Arts in Budapest in 1959,

20 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 postmodern masterpieces. Indeed, they are the many dignitaries in attendance at the gala equal to the best works of Joseph Beuys and opening reception, and it was rumored that no Anselm Kiefer for the emotional resonance that less a connoisseur of cultural politics than Paizs imparts to unexpected materials, as well Henry Kissinger had ducked into 578 as for the daring and compex statements that Broadway one afternoon to have a peek at the they make. show. While U.S. Pop art parodied conspicuous Aptly entitled “Embodiment,” the exhibition consumerism, Paizs’ earliest plexiglass pieces, was installed by Cavello in the gallery’s spa- created in 1969 and containing items of decon- cious and handsome exhibition rooms with the structed clothing, poked perilously pointed stately dignity of a museum survey, and provid- fun at the shoddy workmanship of Hungary’s ed a comprehensive retrospective of Paizs state-owned factories. The following year, a development from the 1960s to the present. powerful plexiglass piece “Gauze Mushroom Among the most recent works were a series of Cloud” addressed the threat of nuclear war large works signaling Paizs’ return to oil paint- from a humanistic, nonpartisan perspective well ing. Created over the past three years, the outside the guidelines of socialist realism. While paintings in the “Standing Figure” series, are much American Pop art of the same period based on the outlines of the ancient Greek László Paizs at Westwood Gallery now seems dated, Paisz’s work continues to sculptures. Ideal in form yet dramatically erod- resonate in a way that once again, alas, seems ed, they are monumental in scale and built up Laszlo Paizs had to “kick against the pricks,” disturbingly prophetic. But it has always been a to relief-like tactility with oil and polyester to borrow Ezra Pound’s felicitous phrase, since sign of Paizs’ greatness that he never tries to enlivened by metallic pigments.While one critic young artists in Hungary were routinely cau- ingratiate himself to the viewer, neither in his referred to them as “a modern version of the tioned by cultural watchdogs against indulging choice of materials or the cold facts he employs classical and Renaissance ideal of beauty,” they in “petit-bourgeois pedantry” and straying into them to convey, as seen in pieces such as also suggest human fossils, like the mummified, the “bog of abstractionism.” “Atomic Cloud with Dog’s Backbone,” which partially decomposed bodies preserved for cen- In the late sixties, after years of showing only makes its point with poignant and unflinching turies in the peat bogs of Ireland. At once innocuous still lifes, Paizs was finally able to eloquence. heroic and vulnerable, they can be seen as exhibit a few of his nonobjective oils in a group Predictably, Paizs had to finance his own totems for modern man, his flesh flayed and show at the Studio of Young Artists in stripped bare by the corrosive acids of modern Budapest. existence. Yet, on closer inspection one can also “I felt that here at last I was being given the discern the hint of a phantom wing jutting out chance to catch up with the century in which I from some of the figures’ armless shoulders, was living,” he recalls wryly in a hefty volume suggesting the possibility of transcendence... dedicated to his work, published in Budapest in Indeed, the transcendent qualities of art ––its 2000. “I didn’t mean 1967; I meant more like ability to survive in the face of seemingly insur- 1900 or 1910...” mountable obstacles, official or otherwise, and But even this minor progress was reversed finally triumph in the end––is just one of the the following year, after Paizs had abandoned lessons that one took away from this important oils to experiment with mixed media, when exhibition. Granted, it was hardly the year’s Hon. András Simonyl, Ambassador of the some of his new mixed media works were hot ticket like Matisse/Picasso at MoMa Republic of Hungary, Ms. Margarite Almeida, yanked from an exhibition by officials and Queens or one of those other worthy yet co-owner of Westwood Gallery, Mrs. Simonyl dumped into a basement storeroom, along redundant mass cultural exercises, in which the and Mr. James Cavello, co-owner of Westwood with works by several other young artists who public is herded through museum corridors as Gallery and curator of the exhibition, at had gone too far afield of officially sanctioned crowded as rush hour subways to gawk upon Westwood Gallery. aesthetics. Around the same time, even the familiar greatness at twenty bucks a clip. architectural commissions by which he and his exhibition when he showed his plexiglass pieces No, Paizs at Westwood was something infi- fellow artists had been earning a meager living in 1971, since Tolerated art was not supported were suddenly withdrawn. by the state. Just as predictably, the reaction “This was too big a blow; some of us never from the state’s critical sycophants was hostile really recovered from it,” he was later to recall. (“empty and vapid wittering,” carped one), “...I knew that there was no way I was going although most of these works would eventually to be able to exhibit those pictures, and every- end up in major public collections. Indeed, by thing to do with painting, everything I had persevering and learning to navigate the sys- learned thus far, began to seem hopeless.” tem, Paizs managed to continue exhibiting in Tormented by the thought of his works rot- Hungary over the next couple of decades, to ting away in a damp cellar, a lightbulb lit up execute large sculptural commissions in hotels above Paizs’ head after he saw insects preserved and other public places, and even to participate Dr. László Mólnar, Ambassador of the Republic in plexiglass in a shop window. But since the in the 1980 Venice Biennale. Yet, even as his of Hungary to the United Nations, Mrs. Paizs, raw materials for making plexiglass were hard fame grew and certain aspects of his work Ms. Agnes Niemetz, Ms. Diane Monet, Ms to come by in Hungary, he had to experiment found popular acceptance, the continuing cli- Margarite Almeida, co-owner of Westwood for years––often at risk to life and limb, he mate of cultural repression made it necessary to Gallery and Mr. James Cavello, co-owner of recalls: “The chemists had no idea how to do it constantly fight for “the Hungarian avant Westwood Gallery and curator of the exhibition, or what kind of catalysts I should use to get a garde’s right to exist.” at Westwood Gallery. thick block of plexiglass. I worked it out for For all intents and purposes, for much of his myself...until I got it right there were one or miraculously productive career, like Locomotiv nitely more rare: an exhibition in a private two explosions in my studio.” GT’s music, László Paizs’ art was merely toler- gallery that introduced a mature master to a Once objects are embedded in plexiglass they ated before the old regime fell and the new one whole new audience. In his curator’s statement “lose their impermanence, they are given new rushed to embrace him as a native genius. James Cavello said that he felt like “an explorer value, they become timeless” Paizs noticed Ironically, the artist was finally able to give who had made a discovery.” And while it is when he finally accomplished some of these formal thanks to a long list of cultural, corpo- true that Cavello is not a man given to under- works, which were to be among his most rate, and government sponsors (including statement, one must concur that coming upon enduring in more ways than one. Enigmatically something called the “Ministry for Cultural the work of László Paizs at this late date is very combining objects such as articles of clothing, Heritage”) for helping to make his first much like stumbling upon an entire continent egg-shells, newspapers, an exploded TV tube, American exhibition at Westwood Gallery pos- that one did not know was there. charred books, beetles, and even the skeletons sible. Andras Simonyi, Ambassador of the of small animals, they are nothing short of Republic of Hungary and his wife were among ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 Alan Munro:

“Gooch” Acrylic over bone pigment 16" X 20" ome of us still think of the great Sstate of Alaska in the same breath as the French Foreign Legion, as a semi- imaginary last outpost of adventure, populated by hard-drinking fugitives and roughnecks right out of Jack London or more recent potboilers such as Joe McGinnis’ “Going to Extremes.” Never mind that all manner of unex- pected people settle in Alaska for a host of complex and often mundane reasons. Take the painter Alan Munro, for example. A self described “native New Yorker from Old Westbury,” he was no outcast drifter in flight from a checkered past on that “rainy, windy and very black night” in 1971, when he and his wife disembarked from the ferry at Juneau with “five of our seven kids, two dogs, an overstuffed green Volkswagen bus 22 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Alaskan Artist, American Original and a silver eighteen foot Sears canoe.” meaning to the painting, a poignant posed in white on the tall evergreens in In fact, Munro, who has earned his plea for the continuation of this noble a snowy forest where one of the grace- living painting murals and designing species. ful animals pauses; in the second, a and constructing dioramas for museums Munro explains that certain aspects lone deer lies dead in blood-stained and cites “working alongside mature, of his paintings are “directed at the snow. accomplished artist friends at the cliche Alaska enjoys amongst the urban, By contrast, a bold and insightful self American Museum of Natural History high-art establishment and most portrait depicts the white-bearded artist in New York” as among his “most Alaskan tourists,” and he admits that “I against backdrop of sinuous forms. important art experiences,” had accept- knowingly play right into their hands While Munro’s grave expression, as well ed a museum job in Alaska. with this recent work.” On the other as the placement of the block letters “We were more than willing to try hand, he adds, “I’m an adopted Tlingit inscribed across his upper chest, suggest Alaska for one year and then ended up and do take that lifelong responsibility a mug-shot, it turns out that the word staying twenty-eight and counting,” and great honor very seriously.” “DOOH” is not a Tlingit term for the says Munro, whose work has flourished Another recent painting juxtaposes artist-as-endangered-species–– but, in the state, where the distinctive the word “GOOCH,” (Tlingit for rather, a pet name that his youngest rhythms, colors, and atmospheres of the “Alaska Gray Wolfe––a species found daughter bestowed on him! rugged landscape and the native cul- only on the mainland and in rare Equally upbeat in another manner is ture–– as well as quite literal depictions instances on a nearby island) with “Clear-cut Eagle,” a dynamic canvas in of the wildlife–– have increasingly strongly stylized images of these beauti- which the majestic avian figure of the found their way into his figurative title emerges from characteristically works and also come to inform his vibrant areas of color, exemplifying more abstract canvases. Munro’s unique ability to combine fig- It may surprise some who cling to urative and abstract elements in a seam- patronizing notions of Alaska as a place less synthesis. where so-called civilized culture seldom Indeed, along with other strong can- intrudes, to learn there are actually sev- vases featuring human and animal fig- eral fine museums in the state. Among ures (one with the English word them are: the Alaska State Museum, “MOOSE” lettered in blue over a where Munro had solo shows in 1973 monochromatic image of the winningly and 1977; the Anchorage Art doleful mammal is especially appealing), Museum, where he participated in the Munro is also represented by some of All Alaska Juried Exhibition in 2000- the more gestural abstract compositions 01; and the CBJ Museum, in Juneau, that are an equally important part of where his new solo exhibition is on his oeuvre. These works, with their view through April 19. intricate configurations of colorful, In the present survey, “Moose, rhythmic shapes, are invariably inspired Mountains, and Men,” Munro employs by nature as well. In some, liberal areas words from the Tlingit language, “Daddy Dooh” of white suggest the patterns made by limned in bold block-letters, in some thawing snow. In others, starkly simpli- paintings. Combined with his strong ful wild canines set against luminous fied animal shapes reveal an affinity for forms, clear, bright color areas, and areas of color. Here again, while the primitivistic forms akin to that of the iconographic compositions, these words composition needs no explication to be Cobra group. lend the paintings a poster-like savored as an aesthetic entity, it enriches Munro, however, is a quintessentially emblemism. Yet their meanings go one’s appreciation to learn from Munro American artist in the tradition of such beyond post-Pop semiotics to touch a that it also refers to “native subsistence early twentieth century pioneers as raw nerve in Alaskan culture. issues, ones presently being hotly debat- Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and In one painting, for example, the ed politically and so far not being Georgia O’Keeffe, who looked toward odd-looking word “XOOTS”–– a addressed or resolved. The white sports Europe yet developed their own inim- Tlingit native noun for “brown bear”–– hunters want equal access to ‘game’ itable brand of homespun Yankee is superimposed on the chest of an regardless of the cultural necessity of abstraction. Alan Munro has revived imposing grizzly, standing upright with their use of this wild game for tradition- and updated their raw vitality for the great creaturely dignity against a back- al food. And wolves are being targeted postmodern age. Only, Munro found ground of swirling abstract shapes. In by whites for mass destruction under his aesthetic frontier in Alaska, and he Pop terms, the picture could be seen as the guise of required predator control.” has explored it richly and adventurously, anthropomorphically amusing, suggest- A jolting one-two punch is deliv- giving us some of the most original, ing a burly football player wearing his ered in two other paintings by Munro: passionate, and powerful images in team name on his jersey. At the same In the first, “Guwakaan,” the Tlingit recent American painting. time, there is a deeper, more elegiac noun for “Black Tail Deer” is superim- ––Ed McCormack APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 The Casual Magic in the Landscapes of Chong-Ok Matthews here is a species of visionary landscape Thus the picture is all about a moment Tpainting that partakes of the best of two and a mood, a magical synthesis of outer worlds, for it evokes a true sense of place, and inner vision, as opposed to a simple even while conveying something more gen- transcription of the landscape. Yet it has the eral and ethereal about the poetic qualities sense of a larger truth about it, the type of of nature. One of the more promising con- truth that transcends mere fact. temporary exponents of this tendency is These qualities carry over into Matthews’ Chong-Ok Matthews, an artist who has other paintings as well, as seen in a series of already had several impressive solo and Venetian scenes painted in a bold yet muted group exhibitions in the U.S., England, manner in a somewhat more subdued France, Italy, Denmark, and Spain, among palette dominated by soft blue hues. other places, and whose work is a pleasure Matthews resists the temptation to exploit to encounter for the first time. the picturesque aspects of Venice as most Born in Seoul, Korea, holding an MFA lesser painters have a tendency to do. from the University of Houston, Matthews Rather, she conveys a deeper beauty by is a painter whose work partakes of the treating its large areas of blue water and sky, as well as its fabled architecture, in a more romantic tradition exemplified by Turner, “Twilight” Ryder, and the recently rediscovered Ralph formal and subdued manner. Albert Blacklock. Her oils on paper are soft- The picture called “Twilight” was particu- In paintings depicting empty gondolas ly atmospheric and impart a sense of natural larly engaging in this regard, its simple com- parked along the canals and other typical mysticism to every scene that she paints. position comprised of just a field with the subjects, Matthews makes no attempt to At the same time, however, Matthews is suggestion of some high weeds here and dazzle us with her brushwork; nonetheless equally sensitive to the formal elements in there and a row of trees clustered on a hori- we are impressed with the authoritative her paintings, which makes them as com- zon line, which is placed rather high in the manner in which she evokes the scenes, with pelling in abstract terms as for their depic- composition. Both the sky and the field her utter economy of gesture. Indeed, tion of specific locales. This combination of below are bathed in the same amber glow, Chong-Ok Matthews accomplishes the kind romanticism and abstraction made Chong - as though the artist were not capturing the of casual magic that can only come when a Ok Matthews’ recent exhibition at Gallery separate elements of sky and land but, painter has so thoroughly mastered his or 32, 32 West 32nd Street, a show that one rather, the ethereal substance of light itself, her craft that technical skill is second nature. could savor on both levels simultaneously. the rarified light of twilight. ––Peter Wiley Emilio Tabasco Paints the Haunting Face of Atrocity t is not always easy to look at what the informed by real aesthetic values. Like Indeed, like Bosch, albeit in a more IItalian-born painter and poet Emilio Dubuffet, too, Tabasco works in a direct broadly contemporary manner, he depicts a Tabasco, who sees France as his second and simplified manner, creating composi- veritable inferno of writhing figures bathed homeland, insists upon showing us. But he tions that transcend the niceties of conven- in an eerie light which he achieves through is an important artist nonetheless, because it tional design in order to achieve a raw the use of a monochromatic overall tone. is necessary that we see it. For Tabasco power that few other artists can equal. This tone, the modern equivalent of Bosch’s paints the devastation of war and terrorism, An important difference between them, gothic twilight infuses the picture surface which has a long history in art, as seen in however, is that while Dubuffet often deals with a weird irradiated glow into which Goya’s “The Disasters of War” and Tabasco apparently scratches or Picasso’s “Guernica.” etches his skeletal figures. These fig- Tabasco, however, has his own ures are often piled in heaps, their approach to composing a picture, simplified skull-like faces with black and it is unlike that of any of his eyesockets and akimbo limbs evok- predecessors, as seen in his recent ing memories of newsphotos we exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, have all seen of heaped bodies in 584 Broadway. Nazi concentration camps or the One could almost see Tabasco’s killing fields of Cambodia. paintings as examples of Art Brut, Some of the most immediately to use a term originated by the compelling paintings in this exhibi- French painter Jean Dubuffet, or tion are those such as “A Cry for Outsider art, the American designa- New York,” “La tragedie New tion that has come into vogue in York,” and “Le 11 September,” all recent years. Yet there is nothing of which deal with the destruction naive or crude about Tabasco’s of the Twin Towers. It is inevitable work. Like Dubuffet, Tabasco is a that these pictures of so recent an sophisticated painter who strives for Painting by Emilio Tabasco atrocity would be most affecting, an emotional directness that is often only with whimsical and even comical subjects, especially to New Yorkers. Emilio Tabasco’s seen in the work of untrained artists who even taking a light view of the human con- paintings, however, are all of a piece, since work directly from their emotions, rather dition, Tabasco’s vision is considerably more they all deal with extremes of suffering than from a preconceived plan or from a apocalyptic. Indeed, in this regard Tabasco caused by man’s inhumanity to man, and grand design based on an overall aesthetic can more readily be compared to this is a universal theme with which all feel- intention. It is obvious in the case of both Hieronymus Bosch in that his pictures ing people can empathize. artists, however, that their passion is address hellish extremes of human behavior. ––Maureen Flynn 24 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Venus in Tennis Sneakers: The Art of Ruth Poniarski ne can hardly imagine a more auspi- with particularly postmodern panache. manner in which it plays off the familiar in Ocious theme for Ruth Poniarski than Here, an Amazonian Atlantan maiden totally unexpected ways. “Atlantis,” the subject of her newest solo adopts the posture of Rodin’s best-known Another intriguing canvas in this regard, show at Jadite Galleries, 413 West 50th sculpture. Hand on chin, she gazes out to is the title picture of the exhibition, Street, from May 8 through 30, with a sea, her head quite literally in the clouds, “Atlantis,” in which the central figure is a reception on Thursday May 8, from 6 to 8 her long hair curling around the legs of her woman wearing a pale violet nightgown, as PM. For the myth of the ancient city swal- chair and continuing to trail out of the pic- though she rose somnambulantly from her lowed by an earthquake and covered by ture space, while a single gull stands near- bed to take a nocturnal stroll. Although a the sea provides a perfect stimulus for this by, regarding her curiously. full moon glows brightly and the precipita- fabulist painter’s fertile imagination, picto- While the reference to Rodin is overt, tion possibility seems nil, she holds above rial wit, and atmospheric skills. there is a subtler hint of Rene Magritte in her head a rainbow-colored umbrella from A superb colorist, Poniarski is particularly the painting’s surreal mood, and particular- which a single thin stream of water flows partial to blue. The hue dominates her pal- ly in the way the figure merges with the mysteriously, replenishing the lake in which let and permeates her canvases, saturating stratosphere. Yet the overall effect is pure she wades ankle-deep. Meanwhile, on two them in nocturnal atmospheres out of Poniarski, owing not only to this artist’s different areas of the shoreline, a lion and a which her other colors glow like gems wry humor, but also to the formal qualities leopard regard her with the puzzlement against velvet. that the activi- Perhaps the ties of the most quintes- human figures sentially noc- in Poniarski’s turnal picture pictures seem in her new to inspire in show is the other species. aptly titled Like charac- “Nightfall.” ters in an In this acrylic ongoing saga, on canvas, we certain figures see a shapely have a habit woman in a recurring in leopard-spot- different ted bathing paintings by suit reclining Poniarski. The on her side somnambu- with an over- lant woman in size rose the night- placed near gown with the her midriff rainbow like the gar- umbrella nish on a blue appears once plate special. again in She glances another can- slyly over her vas entitled shoulder at a “Venus lone white Descending.” water fowl “Night Fall” In this com- sailing by on position, her its belly under a deep blue sky in which that make her work unique. long red hair flows out from one side of clusters of clouds pass over a fat full moon. Not the least of these is the chromatic her head in the windblown manner of No other artist whose name springs imme- subtlety which lends her canvases a shim- Botticeli’s Venus as she stands on the shore diately to mind could make so much from mering luminosity that is especially striking scattering golden seeds to a flock of water such simple elements as Poniarski does in “The Eclipse of Venus,” where her tonal fowl waddling around her white-sneakered here, imbuing the scene with a unique range shifts into a slightly higher register. feet. Meanwhile, a familiar figure from one sense of mystery and humor. Perhaps her Here, another of Poniarski’s bathing beau- of Rembrandt’s etchings that Poniarski has most kindred spirit is the great French ties reclines dreamily in a grassy field, while appropriated in the past to augment her naive fantasist Henri Rousseau, to whom the phantom-like figure of Venus, her large cast of characters appears in the back- she has been accurately compared, both for seashell floating like a vacated rowboat on ground, holding her white garment above her ability to transform reality imaginatively the surface of a nearby body of water, her knees as she wades in the water. and for the wit that enlivens all of her wields a flowing cloak, apparently prepar- That characters from art history mingle paintings. ing to eclipse the full moon that burns freely with the other figures in her canvases Poniarski, however, reveals a much more through a violet sky in which a mysterious suggests the vital connection between art sophisticated sensibility than Rousseau, the face and a reposeful leopard appear as faint and everyday life, between dreams and naif who admired the academic painters of apparitions. As usual in Poniarski’s post- waking reality, that makes the paintings of the Salon, yet finally transcended them by modern allegories, the symbolism remains Ruth Poniarski such richly rewarding visual virtue of his unschooled genius. In tantalizingly obscure, compelling the view- experiences. “Thinkess,” for example, she combines dis- er to collaborate imaginatively with the ––Marie R. Pagano tinctly different art historical references artist. Still the picture delights us for the

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 Art is a Family Affair for Sigal-Ibsen and Loved Ones ose Sigal-Ibsen, a Romanian born artist the art to assist his father with his work dur- Albert Dov Sigal’s Rliving in the U.S since 1957 who has ing his final illness, and has sold his work to mastery as an enamelist become one of our leading exponents of members of the British Royal Family, was made clear in pieces Chinese brush painting, is a frequent among other notables. such as “Safed,” an The exhibition showcased the distinctly image of a small village different creative paths of this talented fami- evoked with great charm ly. Rose Sigal-Ibsen, who long ago put and “Israeli Teens.” The enameling behind her, showed only her dis- latter picture was espe- tinctive brush paintings in a style that com- cially evocative, showing bines the graceful fluidity of Eastern brush - two girls in miniskirts painting with the energy and spontaneity of chatting under a full Western Abstraction. Calligraphy is the basis moon amid small hous- Rose Sigal-Ibsen for most of her compositions and she has es. Also outstanding mastered it so successfully that she was the were “Cluj,” Dov Sigal’s nostalgic watercol- only non-Chinese artist in a group exhibi- or of the small town in Romania where he Daniel Sigal tion that included such masters of the art as was born, painted in an angular manner akin exhibitor in various New York venues, as C.C. Wang and the late Fangyu Wang. to John Marin, and several lively streetscapes well as world wide. Her recent exhibition at Especially out- in oils executed in impastos with a brio rem- the Romanian Cultural Center’s East West standing among iniscent of the Ash Can School. Gallery, at 573-577 Third Avenue was the works by Although Daniel Sigal learned the art something of a departure, however, since Sigal-Ibsen in the from his father, he has evolved his own dis- Sigal-Ibsen showed her own work along more recent show tinctive style as an enamelist. His pieces par- with that of her her late husband, Albert with her husband take of a more literal realism, as seen in his Dov Sigal, and her son, Daniel M. Sigal. and son were a compositions featuring tigers, which capture Before she took up brush painting, Sigal- series of five large not only their feline grace but also the prim- Ibsen was an enamelist, an art form she Albert Dov Sigal scrolls in which itive instincts in their gaze. Other pictures of learned from her husband, who was preemi- she created buoyant compositions from a Japanese geisha and an owl perched on a nent in the field, as well as being a painter in specific characters, as well as a smaller tree branch by Daniel Sigal show an almost oils and watercolors. Daniel Sigal, born in work called “At the Races,” in which five Pop clarity of design by which the younger 1946, has a degree in architecture from images of the character for “horse” pranced artist distinguishes himself from his father’s Tulane University but chose instead to animatedly across a luminous field of yellow atmospheric poetry and his mother’s cele- become an enamelist himself, after learning watercolor. brated brush work. ––Peter Wiley Susan L. Zeller’s Intrepid Neo-Expressionism he species of painting that emerged Rather, it is half concealed by loosely For Tworldwide in the late 1970s, commonly brushed floral forms and gestural flourishes exam- known as Neo-Expressionism, differs from that partially deconstruct the composition in ple, one its prototype, German Expressionism, in a manner that makes one think of de relative- several important ways. Chief among these Kooning’s famous “Woman” series, albeit ly small is that it partakes of aspects of Surrealism, without resorting to similarly monstrous fig- painting Abstraction and other diverse tendencies. ural distortions. called One contemporary painter who avails her- In contrast to the bubblegum pink that “A self of all available options is Susan L. Zeller, Zeller employs to depict the fair flesh tones Healthy whose solo exhibition was recently seen at in “Eve,” the male figure in the companion Stock” Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway. painting “Adam” is darkly pigmented and depicts Zeller began her creative activities in solidly rendered, as he emerges in a crouch two childhood and cites a diverse range of influ- from a dense jungle of foliage that parts like some- ences as instrumental in her development, a curtain. what including the making of mud pies, the illus- The large female figure that dominates comical trations of Norman Rockwell and Arthur another major canvas called “Fruit Bearer” cows, Szyk’s pictures for Anderson’s Fairy Tales, as is equally formidable in another manner. In one this vigorously brushed, boldly composed with well as the pin-up photographs in Playboy “Eve” magazine. These eclectic inspirations make canvas, the fruit referred to in the title are grass themselves felt in her bold Neo- the children that the woman bears in her sticking out of her mouth in a pastoral land- Expressionist oils on canvas, which have an arms, which appear partially sheathed in scape in a rather goodnaturedly straightfor- impressive variety of imagery as well as an leafy coverings like ears of corn, suggesting ward composition. The large, diamond exhilarating formal and coloristic freedom. the offspring of a literal Earth mother. Here, shaped canvas called “Spiritual From Playboy magazine, Zeller says, she too, Zeller’s coloristic intrepidness comes Enlightenment,” however, features a more gained a sense of the female anatomy, and to the forefront in the contrasts that she metaphysical image of a disembodied head one can see how successfully she employs it employs between strident oranges and deep- floating amid spirals and stars on a brilliant in a painting such as her large oil on canvas er green hues, which bring the composition red ground. “Eve.” Here, a shapely blond standing nude alive dynamically in a manner recalling the Both paintings reveal the adventuresome is the dominant figure of the composition. vibrant palette of the late African American spirit that makes Susan L. Zeller a constantly But while the figure is alluring in a manner artist Bob Thompson. surprising, consistently engaging painterly akin to “Playmate” centerfolds, it is not Zeller also allows herself a great deal of presence. presented in as explicitly erotic a manner. latitude where subject matter is concerned. ––Byron Coleman 26 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Pino Chimenti Caricatures the Face of Civilization he widely exhibited, much written- complexity is the late Swedish genius Tabout Italian artist Pino Chimenti has Oyvind Fahlstrom, whose comic-strip evolved a complex alphabet of pictorial influenced style caused clueless critics to symbols to delineate a strange personal mistake him for a Pop artist, although he universe. Chimenti’s realm is an antic was infinitely too subtle to be so designat- place, filled with zany characters (promi- ed. And one should be careful not to rele- nent among them a comical knight in gate Chimenti to a similar fate. One armor, Quixotically insisting that, even in should steer clear especially of lumping our crass age, chivalry is not dead!), hid- him with such flash-in-the pan American den meanings, and intriguing clues to an hotshots as the overpraised and overex- imagination at once hermetic and gregari- posed Carroll Dunham. For while it is true ous that seems a veritable hatchery for that both artists often employ wildly dis- “Danza apotropaica con asta viruale” provocative contradictions and incon- torted figures as receptacles for internal gruities. imagery, Chimenti’s use of the device is style is primarily linear, with areas of bril- The intricate shapes into which elegant rather than deliberately crude, and liant comicstrip color contained Chimenti divides his compositions resem- if comparisons are to be made at all, he within––and end up mapping the entire ble the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that has could be more accurately compared to the terrain of human consciousness. As with already been assembled, yet is still just as approach of some of the artists of Klee, too, this is done with much chest- puzzling, presenting the viewer with unan- Chicago’s Hairy Who School. thumping, but with winning wit and swered questions and mysteries that con- Chimenti, however, employs a cartoon- humility, as though making great art is no tinue to tickle the mind long after one has ish playfulness with unequaled finesse, cos- big deal. encountered them. mically caricaturing not only figures but This is what is so delightful about the Thus no aesthetically adventurous New computers, pinball machines, aircraft, work of Pino Chimenti, who introduces a Yorker should miss the all too rare oppor- architecture, and a host of other warts on note of levity and grace into an art scene tunity to be mystified by this singular the face of contemporary civilization with much in need of it, in a city that often Italian magician’s solo show “Hermetic a whimsical inventiveness that can only be takes itself much too seriously. One can Microcosms,” curated by Stefania compared to artists much higher up on only thank the curator, Stefania Carrozzini, at Gallery @ 49, 322 West the historical food chain such as Victor Carrozzini, of D’Ars International 49th Street, from April 15 to May 6. Brauner and ––most especially —Paul Exhibition Service, Milano, for bringing The only other recent artist who even Klee. For like Klee, Pino Chimenti seems him here to deflate and inspire us with his comes close to Chimenti’s iconographic to “take a line for a little walk”—since his wacky nobility. ––Feliks Karoly Nature and Geometry in the Art of Mark G. Picascio he environment of modern, civilized cal and intellectual, given the deliberate Carcassonne, in France) whose expansive Tpeople is composed of two elements, manner in which Picascio applies color, manicured lawns are divided by maze-like nature and architecture–-although one carefully balancing values and tones to configurations of manmade structures. must concede that the latter has come to evoke the shimmering shifts and subtleties Mark G. Picascio conveys a similar sense increasingly dominate. Mark G. Picascio, a of natural light and the stricter dictates of of the convergence of nature and architec- painter from Los Angeles, California, an inner vision, atmosphere tempered by ture, albeit in a more thoroughly abstract takes these two elements as the starting aesthetic restraint. manner in acrylic paintings on canvas such point for the series of paintings he calls Indeed, his painterly process is obviously as “Foundation Lines,” “Twilight Lines,” “Elevation Lines,” recently exhibited at informed by his professional experience in and “Life Lines.” The latter painting is Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway. graphic design, architectural design, and particularly lyrical, with its complex At an early age, Picascio was inspired by commercial photography. He draws freely arrangements of flowing naturally allusive the hills of Malibu, where he was raised, to on his experience in the applied arts to shapes in soft green, yellow, and earth create watercolors that were precursors of lend his fine art paintings a sleek and strik- colors intersected by more sharply delin- his current style, which combines the soft, ing sense of design akin to that other Los eated geometric elements that crisscross organic shapes and colors of nature with Angles painter Edward Ruscha, while his the composition, simultaneously suggest- harder, more geometric, architectural palette is closer to the California land- ing beams of light and perhaps the forms. Acknowledging Frank Stella’s scapes of Richard Diebenkorn. Apparently, foundation beams of a country house paintings of the 1970s as a formative influ- Picascio has assimilated the lessons of both under construction. ence, Picascio has evolved a personal style of these diverse West Coast artists, even if Such ambiguous perceptual shifts in which disparate elements achieve a strik- only by means of geographic proximity between the ethereal and the concrete add ing abstract synthesis. and environmental osmosis. to the mystery in Picascio’s abstractions, A superb colorist, Picascio’s luminous But even more than either of those con- for he is an artist who avails himself of the hues have a pastel softness that comple- temporaries, Picascio’s paintings bring to allusive possibilities of postmodernism to ments the seeming weightlessness of his mind a famous 1943 canvas by the well convey a highly personal vision. This exhi- forms. Warm pinks and yellows are com- known American artist Charles Sheeler bition of acrylic paintings and iris giclee bined with cool greens and grays in softly entitled “The Artist Looks at Nature.” prints provided New York audiences an harmonizing combinations that lend his Although Sheeler was known as one of the auspicious introduction to an artist who compositions a subtle optical charge. One leaders of the Precisionist movement, in has exhibited widely and attracted consid- enters a rarefied space in which the colors this somewhat uncharacteristic painting, erable attention in Southern California. of nature and of manmade elements he verges on the surreal, depicting himself appear to merge in a unique chromatic working at his easel within a verdant land- synthesis. The overall effect is at once lyri- scape (actually, the walled town of ––Wilson Wong APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 BOOK REVIEW The Duke of Linguistic across the amah who spilling out two “Blackout: Deconstruction alabaster melons feeding my half-brother; as Flashback vividly I soon as she put the little turd to sleep I found myself in a $29.95 jump on top of her; my head buried in her surrounding...a wed- from chest and I play dead for awhile.” ding. I don’t know Nguyen Ducmanh Had he not been able to come up with how I got here. 334 East 82nd Street, something much more imaginatively puz- Mingled with people Author Nguyen NYC 10028 zling and tongue twisting (I still don’t get eating, drinking. Duemanh it, but that’s beside the point) Ducmanh Probably they think I am a friend of their “I name the book with this current title might have called this book “Thanks for the friends. I invited myself here and stay a because Mon Grand Amour Deborah, Mammaries,” so often is this primal scene week! Pleasant time...I parked my car by the she took me to a mountain and under reenacted in its pages. For example, on a square along all the fancied restaurants, eat- the waterfall I drowned myself in her bus in Paris “a busty girl keep smiling and ing there and here, but I could not remem- bluest eyes...She gave me her armpit for said to me she has an Oriental beau and is a ber what town and in what purpose I was love...I gave my love for her heart.” schickle...” One thing leads to another, as it here!” ––Nguyen Ducmanh, usually does with Duke, and “I took her to Four ex-wives and several years of sobriety from “To Whom Returns to Naas.” hotel de passe . I, 24, she is very young 23, later, a chastened Nguyen Ducmanh sat copper hair, her pair of mammoths burst down at a computer owned by his art dealer New York painter turned writer Nguyen out like volcanoes ready to seismic! She try Allan Stone and wrote this madcap master- Ducmanh, whose recently published autobi- to hide them with a mere chemise. Alas, my piece filled not only with his misadventures ography “To Whom Returns to Naas” has undernourished brain has prefigured a steak and ruminations but also riddled with mar- to be one of the most unjustly unheralded saignant. She let me aspire the nipples. I feel velously mangled quotes from other greats literary events of the year, may believe that like Romulus.” (“Who sees the difference between body he’s writing in a known language. But he’s Not that all is fun and frolic in and soul don’t have neither.”––O. Wilde; actually doing something more avant garde: Ducmanh’s memoir. Serious regrets, such as “Love conquest all!”––Da Vinci), as well as originating a dialect in which, wittingly or a grown daughter he hasn’t seen since she his own priceless aphorisms duly credited : not, he approaches an almost Joycean poetry. seven, lead to serious philosophical musings, “I saw a man pray in front of a tree, because I said it once and I’ll say it again: In his albeit in our hero’s inimitable manner: “I God is invisible. That makes sense to rhythmically fractured broken English prose don’t know is my raison I am here on earth, me.”––Duke. (which most often chronicles his amorous microscopically related to Infinite Light, And, finally: “I gave my diskette of this adventures in the wild manner of a slapstick Space, Time and Matter Macro, but I know book to Ron Williams to read. He told me Henry Miller, antic accounts of bold when 2 buffaloes collide the flies get hurt is to be ashamed of myself but an excellent schemes, epic drinking bouts, and comic and that is what happen to children of dent- book...” seductions) Ducmanh proclaims himself an ed families.” No need to be ashamed, Duke; art inveterate rascal, and a struggling sex addict, Alcohol, the fuel of Duke’s manic energy redeems all. encapsulating all the reckless vigor of an for years, led to other surreal awakenings: ––Ed McCormack extravagant and bohemianly exemplary exis- tence. Born in Hanoi in 1933, Ducmanh (or C E C I L Y B A R T H “Duke” as he is known to his Western inti- CATALAN F I R E S T E I N mates, not only as an Americanization of his name but also because the moniker suits his YOUNG ARTISTS rakish persona) left his native Vietnam in 1950 for France, came to the U.S. in 1965, IN NEW YORK and has enriched this land of ours with his citizenship since 1973. He claims to descend from a “long line of kings, chief- April 1 - 19, 2003 tains, barons, robbers, slaves traders, traitors, whores, ac/dc propensity dc, poets, duchesses, junkies, gamblers, revolutionar- ies, mostly hard-core alkies.” Jordi Balart That’s just by way of introduction, in a short paragraph preceding the title page of Titiana Blanqué his tome, which has one of Ducmanh’s Maria Fabre whiplash Zen lunatic nudes on the front SEND IN THE CLONES cover, handsomely designed by his fellow Joan Lloveras Mixed Media Monotypes painter Bo Joseph. Flip the book over and there on the back cover is a color picture of Miriam Ribas April 2 - 26, 2003 the author, looking properly authorly in glasses with a granny-string, nice suit , nice Begonya Samit Reception Sat. April 5, 6-8pm bow-tie, nice smile, with the following excerpt blurbed above it: “Without mother love, I was taken care by nannies and aunts. My sister hates me. I sucked my grandma titties until I go to school, 6 years old 568 Broadway, Ste 607, NYC 10012 (Jesuit Prep). I was spoiled; in the evenings try to spell the alphabet by pupitre, sat 212 226 8711 • Tues - Sat 11- 5:30 28 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Materials and Metaphors in the New Reliefs of Janet L. Bohman hile we generally assume art that is illusionism, although it is certainly allusive, era. Wminimalist to be inexpressive and and this has to do––at least in part–– with That many of Bohman’s pieces are made anti-poetic, the opposite is true in the work the fact that Bohman, unlike these older with shaped paper also seems significant, of Janet L. Bohman, whose new solo exhibi- minimalists, never really rejected painting. since paper is an organic material and as tion of works in acrylic on shaped paper and Indeed, her interweaving bands of color, such possesses properties distinctly different acrylic on linen over wooden armatures, while stringently hard-edged, are rendered from plastic, fiberglass, or steel, among “Reliefs in Flight,” can be seen at Viridian remarkably expressive by the manner in other “industrialized” sculptural materials. Artists, 530 West 25th Street, from April 8 which her pieces flow in space, their con- In the simplest sense, these more porous through 26. (There properties can be will be an opening termed softer, reception on warmer, and more Saturday, April 12, “viewer-friendly” from 3 to 5 PM, and and are particularly coffee and conversa- effective in tion with the artist Bohman’s new on Saturday, April pieces, as seen in the 19, at 1 PM.) series called Although Bohman “Flying.” Indeed, remains faithful to all of the Bohman’s the simplicity and painted reliefs in purity that emerged both shaped paper in the 1960s and and linen share a dominated American buoyancy that is art through the reflected in titles 1970s, when she first such as “Rising,” moved away from “Soaring,” two-dimensional “Leaping,” “Zig paintings to explore Zagging” and painted reliefs, her “Winter Gliding.” work has gone Even while these beyond the narrowly pieces hold the wall prescribed formalism with a weighty and of that time into the impressive physical realm of the sublime. presence, the actual Indeed, her willing- lightness of the ness to admit an ele- materials advances ment of spiritual sug- the metaphor of gestiveness into her flight by evoking the painted reliefs puts sense of kites soaring her more in harmony in the sky, an associ- ation that is made all with postmodern “Flying I,” Acrylic on sculpted paper, 27" X 27 1/2" X 4 1/2" tendencies than most the more striking by other artists who came of age in the same tours turning and furling sensually, causing Bohman’s brilliant colors. Unlike kites, period. No doubt this accounts for at least the stripes of of blue, yellow, green, violet, however, Bohman’s painted reliefs in both some of the fascination that her work holds and other harmoniously matched hues to sculpted paper and linen are not one-dimen- for us. ripple like ribbons on a breeze. sional. Rather, they are possessed of consid- Another important factor is the materials Bohman seems effortlessly to achieve a erable depth. Some parts of their surfaces in which Bohman works. Minimalist artists synthesis of painting and sculpture that dis- recede into shadow, while others advance such as Don Judd, Robert Morris, and proves Morris’ theory regarding the “hostil- into the light; yet the overall thrust of their Ronald Bladen, among others, began as ity” of the two mediums. This, too, is more movement is fluid and undulant, the forms painters but eventually rejected painting for in keeping with the pluralistic spirit of post- flowing, flaring, and unfurling as the pieces materials such as fiberglass, molded plastics, modernism, which now makes Morris’ insis- take flight. As the eye moves over the piece, and sheet metal. Their intention in doing so tence on segregating the two mediums seem the undulating bands of vibrant color rip- was to depersonalize their pieces, in order to almost comically retro–– a stodgy, disgrun- pling over the surface appear to expand and relate their elemental volumes to the matter- tled, and finally artificial construct born of contract with a kinetic energy equal to that of-factness of architecture and industrial an era in which only contention, conflict, in the paintings of Bridget Riley. This fur- products, thereby removing them further and usurpment were regarded as signifying ther enhances the velocity of the pieces, from any sense of illusion or even allusive- aesthetic progress. That old Oedipal ritual in which varies subtly with their shapes: some ness. Robert Morris put it quite bluntly which one art movement ––or even medium with gracefully curving edges that curl out when he stated that “ the concerns of sculp- ––must wipe out another now seems a from the wall suggest the outspread wings ture have been for some time now not only throwback to a time when the art world was of majestic birds, while others have the distinct from but hostile to those of paint- totally dominated by the male ego. In her streamlined phallic thrust one associates ing,” and added that sculpture, because of ability to merge the two mediums so suc- with aerodynes . All possess a beauty, at its physical nature, had “never been cessfully, as well as to combine a sensitive once allusive and emblematic, that sets Janet involved with illusionism.” expressivity with formal rigor, Bohman L. Bohman apart as an artist with a singular- Neither is Bohman’s work involved with seems a minimalist for a more enlightened ly exhilarating vision. ––Byron Coleman

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 Hong Purume: A Korean Painter’s Universal Synthesis of Form especially apt manner. One can only specu- personal style in paintings which depict a late about how deliberate this synthesis is, rough rustic terrain with a folkloric feeling since there is invariably a close relationship that is not merely Asian but peculiarly between painting and calligraphy in Asian Korean. cultures and Korean calligraphy has in com- In mon with cubist form the fact that its char- Hong’s acters are generally less cursive and more composi- angular than either Chinese or Japanese cal- tion, small, ligraphy. Since Hong is obviously a progres- squared off sive and sophisticated contemporary artist, country attuned to the possibilities and challenges of dwellings multiculturalism, it seems only natural that are drawn she would choose freely from both sides of with broad the menu in order to enrich her personal strokes of expression. the brush In any case, Hong’s squarish shapes are into wet laid down in clotted, monochromatic wash- gray wash- es that lend her compositions greater tactile es that suggestiveness and weight than one is accus- puddle and tomed to seeing in ink painting. There is pool to also the matter of how she handles shallow evoke land space. Which is to say that while we all masses and know that Western notions of perspective bodies of Hong Purume do not apply to traditional Asian painting, water. Painting by Hong Purume where the illusion of depth and distance is Interspersed with these square little abodes through placement of the various elements are country churches with crosses on their he painter Hong, Purume (the comma of the composition in two dimensions, steeps, conveying the entrenchment of Tbetween her two names is not meant to Hong’s landscapes appear little concerned Christianity in Korean culture, where give one literal pause; it is traditional in with illusion. Rather, her bold brushstrokes churches are a more prominent part of the Korean culture to put the surname first, and and wet-into-wet tonal modulations landscape than in any other Asian country. to employ the same order when translating emphatically emphasize gesture over mean- The power and the meaning in Hong’s Korean names into English) is one of the ing, as well as the sanctity of the picture paintings, however, does not lie in her best exemplars of the crossfertilization that plane in a manner more selfconsciously akin matter-of-fact depiction of such specifics, is very much a part of the East-West dia- to Abstract Expressionism. but in the life of the line and the vigor of logue in contemporary art. She will be Here one is tempted to digress, to take a the gesture. showing her paintings at Cast Iron Gallery, detour into the debt that Western abstrac- For most Asian painters who honor their 159 Mercer street from May 3 through 21. tion owes to Asia, and particularly Zen ink national heritage, even as they emerge in the There will be an opening reception on May painting, for its “flatness” as well as its ges- international art scene, Hong, Purume 3 from 4 to 6pm and a closing reception on tural force. But most of us know all about makes her mark in contemporary art by May 21 from 5 to 7pm. that by now, and what is most significant virtue of her ability to imbue traditional In Hong’s work, Asian ink painting and about the art of Hong, Purume is how suc- aspects of her culture with personal immedi- the influence of Cubism, the formal arma- cessfully she has synthesized these elements acy and universal appeal. ture upon which most Western modernism of the long, ongoing dialogue between is supported, converge and merge in an Eastern and Western aesthetics to forge a ––Ed McCormack

IRVING BARRETT ARTLIAISON ON INTERNET established on the world wide web in 1994 DUALITIES visit us at: http://artliaison.org Studies in Confrontation and Connection SEE THE WORK OF ARTISTS FROM ACROSS THE NATION & AROUND THE WORLD For information & rates to place your work on the WWW, with your own address, contact: Artliaison 305 West 28 Street, 13G, New York, NY 10001 April 22- May 10, 2003 (212) 924-6531 [email protected] RECEPTION: Thursday, April 24, 6 -8 pm at THE BROOME STREET GALLERY Ground floor, 1,300 sq. ft. Exhibition space rental available 530 West 25th St., 4th Fl. NYC 10001 Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm Tel 212 367-7003 498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 Tel: (212) 941-0130

30 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 At Monique Goldstrom Gallery: Exploring Notions of Shelter n New York City, where homelessness is assemblages of Fiorenzo Belfiore, on the a color photograph in which cubistically Irampant and real estate prices are other hand, convey a more metaphorical clustered yellow rooftops convey a sense of “through the roof,” so to speak, the group sense of shelter, with recycled objects such not only the shelter of one’s own home but show “Shelters” takes on particular reso- as vases and marbles collected within enclo- that of one’s own village, a concept rapidly nance, at Monique Goldstrom Gallery, 560 sures of glass or plexiglass. Here, Belfiore is disappearing in most parts of the world. Broadway, through April 15. represented by a piece called “Molecular Clara Scarampella, who has exhibited Curator Stefania Carrozzini, of D’Ars Bell,” its whimsical and graceful shapes pro- widely since 1974, combines the conceptual International Exhibition Service, Milan, jecting an ethereal feeling akin to some of and the physical with striking results. Her Italy, contributes a text to the catalog that is Giacometti’s early surrealist sculptures. work in powder in glass fusion and graphics more of an eloquent prose poem than an Pino Vastarella, a is called “Galaxy” but it’s circular shape and essay. She explores the notion of shelter as a widely exhibited artist tactile surface also suggests an esoteric sun- “space reconciliation” and for “spiritual and architect who has dial, in keeping with her desire to create retreat,” among other things, and concludes worked on a wide range works that are projections of her soul, “of its by stating that “To seek shelter does not of projects from graphics light and shadows.” mean to escape from the world, rather to and fashion designing to Among the more intriguing exponents of find oneself, to find the world anew.” And Massimo Franchi image editing, shows an postmodernism are those artists who are the nine artists she chose for this show sup- acrylic painting on can- finding ways to employ minimalist forms port her thesis with their generally affirma- vas called “Other Panoramas.” It is a monu- expressively rather than as formal statements tive approaches to the theme. mental monochromatic close-up of a dazed- devoid of content, as seen in the work of Barbara Bachner, the lone American looking middle aged man in profile, staring Giorgio Tonti, one of the pioneers of serial among several Italians, is well known for her up at tall buildings enveloped in smoke and art in Italy. Although the shape of Tonti’s conceptual approach, based on her dream debris that no New untitled piece in acrylic on cut-out board journals, from which she develops mixed Yorker can look at could suggest a tombstone (the final resting media paintings, sculptures and videos. without recalling the place as shelter?), the vertical waves of tex- Here, Bachner addresses the theme with a shock of 9/11. tured color down its center invites myriad mysterious video that includes images of a For Massimo other interpretations as well. masked woman making her way through a Franchi, the body Vincenzo Torcello, widely known in Italy secluded green thicket, suggesting shelter as itself is obviously the for works which both hideaway and place for exploration. ultimate refuge. In Vincenzo Torcello might be termed Maria Rebecca Ballestra, a journalist as Franchi’s oil “The “neo dadaistic” well as a visual artist, is represented by an Shield,” two monochromatic realist images should be familiar installation juxtaposing of a male torso, painted in a sketchy gestural to some New two images of young manner akin to Larry Rivers, are juxtaposed York gallery goers boys with elementary with symbols resembling the red stamps––or for his past exhi- houses and the phrase “chops”––that Asian artists use to sign their bitions at Nexus paintings, perhaps signifying the “language Gallery and “my home” scrawled Pino Vastarella on them with a ram- of the body” that preoccupies this artist. Scuola Italiana shackle house haphaz- Giovanni Garasto is a multifaceted artist Gugliemo Marconi. Torcello appears to ardly constructed of whose photographs, watercolors, collages interpret the theme of the present show toys and a TV set. and poetry all deal with the convergence of with a touch of macabre irony, exhibiting a Poignantly, her work outer and inner realities, leading one to mixed media work resembling a bird’s nest seems to address issues wonder if the internal realm is where he with visceral red stains at its center, perhaps of childhood insecurity. Maria Rebecca finds his own solace and shelter. Here, suggesting that no shelter can offer ultimate The mixed media Ballestra Garasto approaches the theme directly, with security–– or safety. ––Wilson Wong Spring Arrivals A Fine Arts Exhibit Curated by Carole Whitton LIBERATED PERSPECTIVES April 9 - 27, 2003 MAY 13 - JUNE 4, 2003 Reception: Saturday, April 12, 2:30-5:30pm Reception: MAY 15, 2003 6-8pm 2 K.A. Gibbons • Eleanor Gilpatrick • Joey Infante Chip Linda Lessner • Laura Loving • Miguel Angel Mora Katarzyna Domanska James McDonald • Renee O’Sullivan Rongshu Luo Rodrigo Sanz • Meyer Tannenbaum • Carole Whitton Larry Thompson C. Wilkinson Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) 415 West Broadway, 5th Floor SOHO, NY NY 10012 212-226-4151 / Fax: 212-966-4380 Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 www.agora-gallery.com • www.art-mine.com [email protected] www.wsacny.org Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 6 pm

APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 Holly Meeker Rom and Jean T. Kroeber: A Natural Simpatico n the face of it, Holly Meeker Rom two distinctly different artists. Jean T. Kroeber, on the other hand, takes Oand Jean T. Kroeber are two very dif- No artist demonstrates more effectively considerable abstract liberties with anatomy ferent kinds of artists. Rom is a watercol- than Holly in her stone and wood sculptures, simplify- orist who takes an intimate approach to Meeker Rom ing her figures to emphasize their dynamic landscape, zeroing in on her subjects like a how watercol- abstract qualities and imbue them with naturalist, while Kroeber is a sculptor whose or lends itself expressiveness. interpretations of the female figure achieve to capturing Influenced early on by Greek and monumentality on a relatively intimate fleeting quali- Romanesque carvings, as well as by Maillol, scale. ties of light Kroeber has evolved a highly individual But in their recent joint exhibition and making style, within which she is able to express a “Transformations of Nature,” at The Pen immutable the great deal of formal and symbolic diversity. and Brush, Inc., 16 East Tenth Street, it chromatic While one full length figure in Manzanita became clear that the two artists have a lot magic that Wood will be as elongated as a Giacometti more in common than one might think. they wreak on (yet sensual rather than gaunt), another will For they seem to share a deep and abiding natural sur- be a voluptuous torso in Champlain Black respect for the natural world. faces. She Marble. One piece will depict a mother and In Rom’s case, this manifests in the acute employs the child, their severely stylized figures merg- attention that she pays to the minutia of the translucent ing in single, tender synthesis. Yet another forest and the beach, to the individual freshness of Holly Meeker Rom full female figure freezes a sense of animat- qualities of tree-bark, shells, and leaves; aquarelle to ed move- while in Kroeber’s it comes across in her evoke the play of light on trees and leaves ment by relationship to the materials themselves: and foliage with luminous washes of color virtue of the stone and wood from which she carves that play off against the sparkling white of Kroeber’s her figures. the bare paper. brilliant Between them, these two women tran- Like all the best exponents of this delineation scend the barrier that often divides painting demanding medium, Rom makes the bare of the folds and sculpture when they occupy the same paper a prominent element in her composi- in her robes gallery––those sharp distinctions between tions. Indeed, she takes it even further than and the tex- the two mediums that can sometimes create most, often leaving large expanses of the tured flow visual discord. By contrast in the work of paper untouched, to isolate a delicate ever- of her long Rom and Kroeber, the organic relationship green branch laden with pine cones against hair. between image and actuality provokes a its whiteness in an almost Asian manner, or Although remarkable natural dialogue. The subtle to lend a sense of space and air to a cluster possessed of textures and colors of the wood and stone of clam and mussel shells in a beachscape entirely dif- that Kroeber carves so skillfully ––the with miniature rainbows playing around ferent Georgia pink marble or reddish-brown their edges. approaches Manzanita wood––are reflected in the col- Holly Meeker Rom respects and the Jean Kroeber and visions, ors that Rom discovers in nature and specific character of each natural object Holly applies to her sparklingly fresh watercolors. that she paints, however humble. Yet her Meeker Rom and Jean T. Kroeber Thus one tended to view their work in con- sure command of her medium enables complemented and brought out the best cert, rather than separately, which lent the her to convey its essence with an impressive of each other in this thoroughly enjoyable exhibition an unusual sense of natural unity. abstract freedom that makes her paintings exhibition. This visual simpatico, however, in no way much more than literal interpretations obscured the individual qualities of these of nature. ––Jeannie McCormack

OUT FROM DOWN UNDER AND BEYOND MAY 13 - JUNE 4, 2003 Reception: MAY 15, 2003 6-8pm Ian Bank Smith Stephan Herve Cappon Tamir David Hamish Stephen Nova Jacinta Maree Stewart

415 West Broadway, 5th Floor SOHO, NY NY 10012 212-226-4151 / Fax: 212-966-4380 www.agora-gallery.com • www.art-mine.com Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 6 pm

32 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Power and Transcendence in the Tondos of Mary Frances Judge ne of the more unusual pleasures of Described by the artist herself as “a viewer with its chromatic subtlety, created Othis city is finding excellent exhibition mythological expression of Global Outreach with close-valued variations of yellow and spaces tucked away in unexpected places. in the united forms of feminine and mascu- orange hues that evoke a sense of the One of the more interesting of such venues line archetypes,” this canvas, like all of those rarefied light of the early morning hours, is the Digital Sandbox Gallery, at 55 Broad in the present exhibition is a tondo, a circu- in the latter canvas Judge sets a monolithic Street, 4th floor. This is a handsome alter- lar format that became fashionable in the red central shape, limned in a flat “hard native venue in a large office building right mid 15th century Italian Renaissance, which edge” manner, against a lighter blue in a across the street from The New York Stock she has revived more consistently than any composition notable for its emblematic Exchange, which places it in a location other contemporary artist that one can boldness. where finance and art can be said to inter- name. The tondo is an auspicious format for Then there is “Al Lago,” another dynamic sect, since it’s close to both Wall Street and Judge’s paintings, since a circle is infinite in tondo in which a sumptuous expanse of within walking distance of Tribecca, where many artists live and have their studios. Generously donated by the Rudin Corporation for art exhibitions under the direction of Jane St. Lifer, an independent curator and appraiser, the gallery is open to the public free of charge Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 PM. (ID is required to enter the building.) Featured through the month of April is a solo exhibition of paintings by Tribecca artist Mary Frances Judge, who has exhibit- ed widely throughout the United States, as well as in Italy and Brazil, and whose work is in numerous prestigious public and pri- vate collections here and abroad. “A recycler of human material and ener- gies, I collect the cast-off personal effects of people living and dead,” Judge has stated of her work. “A commitment to some type of psychic and spiritual human ecology moves me to rescue these materials representative of human life so that they not be disrespect- fully abandoned or discarded...The psychic energies invested in these abandoned mate- rials by their former owners seek release as I grapple with them, playing with them and allowing them to speak to me as they dictate to me their desired new state. As I embed them in the paint, the original features of these materials are more or less lost in the process of transfiguration.” Although Mary Frances Judge has worked with the figure in past exhibitions, such as her major solo show at Monogramma Arte Contemporanea, where paintings such as “Europa” 72" Mixed Media “Degli Dei al Tevere” centered on mytho- its dimensions and complements the natural blue is set against rhythmic yellow textured logical faces, the overall thrust of her paint- expansiveness of her forms, lending even her forms in the lower portion of the composi- ings in the present show at Digital Sandbox smaller compositions a sense of scale much tion, suggesting a horizon of waves flowing gallery is abstract. Even when figurative ele- larger than their actual size. This seems par- against a nocturnal sky. ments can be discerned, as seen in her large ticularly true of her painting “911,” in the Mary Frances Judge is an artist with the mixed media painting “Europa,” where the present show. As befits an abstract interpre- ability to covey a host of meanings, both suggestion of a simplified profile appears in tation of a dark day in our nation’s history, material and spiritual, through her powerful the left hand corner of the circular canvas, the colors in this canvas are more somber yet subtle manipulation of abstract form and the composition compels our attention by than those that Judge employs habitually, vibrant color. The innate tactility of her the sheer force of form and color. Here, while its especially rough textures, created relief-like painted surfaces imbues her ton- boldly brushed areas of luminous orange with collage elements submerged below the dos with a physically imposing presence, and green hues are juxtaposed with gestural thickly pigmented surface, suggest the den- bespeaking a sensuous worldliness, while her strokes of red violet to create a chromatic sity of the debris in the gaping cavity at lush and lyrical use of color conveys some- dynamism suggesting that the painter has Ground Zero. thing more ethereal, akin to spiritual auras. dipped her brush in liquid light. Further Larger tondos such as “Dawn” and Her work is filled with quiet conviction and enlivened by splashes and spatters of darker “Gemini” demonstrate the impressive range conveys a contagious sense of joy and ful- hues, “Europa” combines the lyrical sweep of compositional and coloristic diversity that fillment to the perceptive viewer. Such tran- of abstract expressionism with a more post- Judge achieves within the format. While the scendence is a rare quality in contemporary modern sense of submerged content and former painting is amorphous in the manner painting and deserves to be savored. symbolic allusiveness. of color field painting and enraptures the ––Maureen Flynn APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 33 Sumio Inoue’s Poetic Images of Prayerful Silence ome of the May 21 from 5 to 7pm.) the shadow,” Inoue has stated, and his use Srefreshing new Inoue, who refers to his work as of shadow is especially dramatic in his approaches that “Harmonization of Japanese and Western,” European series, where architectural details Japanese artists traveled to Ogawa-cho, a village in Saitama are thrown into high relief by contrasts of have brought to prefecture known for its fine paper, to learn light and dark. The interiors of churches “Untitled” photography–– the technique of making Japanese paper. He provide him with some of his most auspi- particularly in relation to the interpretation created a special heavy paper and then spent cious opportunities for exploiting of space, time, memory, and specific cultural ten years perfecting the technique of print- chiaroscuro as a means to create the sense of symbols–– were surveyed in the landmark ing on its rough surface. “silence and warmth” that he seeks as a spir- exhibition “Photography and Beyond in “Because of the thickness of the paper, itual signifier in his pictures. Japan,” which originated at the Hara color keeps soaking into the paper and soak- Yet, the drama of light and dark is enacted Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in ing into the area around it,” Inoue says. in many different ways in the natural and the late nineties and traveled to the “So it’s hard to create black. It’s hard to architectural details on which Inoue focuses Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington create the image that I imagine. I like that his discerning lens: Towers, fountains, stat- D.C., among other American museums. it’s hard.” ues, and steeples soar skyward, their forms As Toshio Hara, director of the Hara He has also developed painstaking meth- delineated by areas of shadow. Portals and Museum of Contemporary Art pointed out ods for tinting his contact paper, applying columns loom majestically. Areas of light in the catalogue for the show, in the work of colors from tree barks and treating it with slice sharply through darkness or are swal- many of the best contemporary Japanese emulsions to make some areas darker than lowed by yawning doors and archways. photographers “centuries-old artistic tradi- others, creating subtle ground-hues and Windows are illuminated against black walls. tions, concepts and philosophies metamor- tonalities that enhance the poetic atmos- Silhouetted figures scurry like ghosts phose in the artists’ hands to resurface in pheres in his pictures, lending them the through a great marble hall as blinding light motif, format and emotion.” timeless quality of Old Master drawings in pours through a tall entryway. A baroque Certainly this tendency to celebrate and sepia or objects preserved in amber. outdoor carousel is set against ancient build- honor the old within the context of the new Indeed, Inoue’s photographs are also like ings adorned by elaborate carvings and can be seen in the work of Sumio Inoue, a drawings in that each is a unique original accented traceries of bare tree-limbs... highly original Japanese photographer who ––“one picture for one negative,” as he puts To stop time and enable his viewers to will be showing his series “SILENZIO it–– and cannot be duplicated. It takes him a “feel God inside their hearts and spend ––Silent Prayer” which consists of images of month to create one picture, making it pos- a moment of peacefulness” may seem a European cities printed on handmade sible for him to produce only a few prints lofty goal, but Sumio Inoue achieves it Japanese paper, at Cast Iron Gallery, 159 per year. Each print preserves a magical admirably in this affectingly meditative Mercer street from May 3 through 21. moment when times stands still and a sense series of pictures. (There will be an opening reception on May silence is made manifest in light and shadow. –––Ed McCormack 3 from 4 to 6pm and a closing reception on “I am attracted to the mysteriousness of The Rugged “New Naturism” of Alicia De La Torre licia De La Torre, whose work was mon with Frank Aurbach and Leon Kossoff, Arecently seen at Agora Gallery, 415 two contemporary British painters who West Broadway, in Soho, belongs to that practically sculpt their paintings out of thick category of postmodern painter for whom a oil impastos. Like them, Alicia De La Torre writer for this publication coined the apt simultaneously discovers and deconstructs term “New Naturist.” For while De La her subjects in the act of painting: Thick, Torre, who has also worked with stained dark vertical strokes establish a sense of the glass and pottery, is inspired by landscape, tree line in a forest, only to be subordinated she does not so much delineate the lay of to areas of green and yellow that assert the the land as plumb the inner essences of density of the foliage. Staccato horizontal nature, capturing its soul rather than its bursts of blue, mediated by foamy bits of superficial appearance. white, convey the sense of a lake or pond Although De La Torre works in oils on winding through the lush landscape. Yet canvas, the most traditional of mediums, her these patches of color, too, are all but con- approach is by no means conventional; for sumed by the crusty materiality of pigment, while a general sense of specific aspects of which activates the entire surface of the nature–– foliage, sunlight, water–– inform composition, obliging the viewer to seek the “#1 untitled” her compositions, her pictures can also be depth in the image. viewed abstractly. Indeed, her forms lie flat All of these elements, however, do indeed which finally achieves a reality of its own, on the picture plane and a sense of the grid create a shimmering sense of immediacy that quite apart from the subject matter. comes through her application of color is in many ways more alive and accurate It is a testament to Alicia De La Torre’s areas, relating the structuring of her canvas than a more pictorial treatment of the same obsessive determination that most of her to Cubism. Indeed, while she cites Monet subject. The sumptuousness of the pigment compositions are quite similar, apart from and Pissarro as inspirations and is clearly itself seems a surrogate for the succulence of slight variations in the placement of the influenced by Impressionism, the master she the greenery, the richness of soil, the tactili- patches of color from one canvas to the appears closest to is Cezanne, given how her ty of tree-bark. All are made manifest, rather other. For it is not a variety of resemblances blunt manner of laying down pigment than merely evoked, in the impastos De La that she seeks but a synthesis of all land- builds on those distinctive strokes that uni- Torre layers so insistently. It seems as scapes in one indelible and immutable image. versally influential master evolved as the though she is attempting not so much to And she succeeds splendidly in making the building blocks of modern painting. depict the landscape as to rebuild it by the elusive qualities of nature come alive on the De La Torre also shares qualities in com- cumulative application of the pigment, canvas. ––Jane Morgenstern 34 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Cecily Barth Firestein Sends in the Clones hen an artist is as good as Cecily drips and splatters, WBarth Firestein, and has been exhibit- and contrasts ing regularly for as long, one has to wonder between glossy why she is not better known. Not that oil-based printing Firestein has been ignored; her work is in inks and matte many prestigious collections and she is tempera paints greatly admired by other artists—which is add to the sheer perhaps the most significant tribute of all. painterly delecta- Yet the fact remains that Firestein’s art, on tion of Firestein’s the face of its considerable merits, deserves recent monotypes. much more attention and recognition than These are further it has received over the years. enhanced by a Thus every exhibition by Firestein variety of collage becomes an occasion for puzzlement as well elements such as as for pleasure. This is especially true of her bits of textured or solo show, “Send in the Clones,” at Phoenix patterned cloth, Gallery, 568 Broadway, from April 2 tactile clumps of through 26, with a reception on Saturday shredded paper, April 5, from 6 to 8 PM. That this is quite and drawn or possibly her best exhibition to date raises all incised lines that the old questions anew. contribute to the One of the more simplistic answers could the overall lus- be that as a well-bred young woman in the ciousness of effect. Tenth Street gallery scene of the late fifties In an essay Firestein tended to shun the Cedar Bar and called “Taste and the boozy socializing of her male peers. Energy,” the artist (Surely, as the overwhelmingly male canon and critic Fairfield of the New York School attests, she would Porter once stated not be the first gifted female artist to be that while “good penalized for not being “one of the guys.”) taste is not essen- Another answer may be that while tial,” energy is “a Firestein’s work is preeminently painterly, bridge to all that she stubbornly insists on defining herself as is essential.” In “primarily a printmaker,” even though she the course of does not print multiple editions and her proving, perhaps large mixed media monotypes are one-of-a- as convincingly kind works, virtually indistinguishable from any artist alive, paintings. In an era when mediums often that those two merge or overlap, one is tempted to quibble “Man, if you gotta ask, you don’t know” Mixed media monotype qualities need with her self-definition, since printmaking is not be mutually all too often wrongly marginalized as an tom portion of the composition under a exclusive, Firestein activity outside the larger arena of painting, downpour of milky white pigment sparely has probably caused further confusion where most of the spectacular, attention- accented with floating autumn leaves. among the critically clueless as to where getting action supposedly occurs. As the witty title of the present exhibition her work fits into the hierarchal categories Given that Firestein, like many of the best indicates, these figures are “clones” for of contemporary art. artists of her generation, studied painting being identical; yet the term can also be For while Porter did not come right out with Hans Hofmann, and that her work taken as a wry comment on the practice of and say so, in modern art “taste” is synony- partakes of the scale and immediacy that we making multiple editions of prints, which mous with “French” and “energy” with associate with the medium, her willful insis- Firestein so eschews. “American.” Granted, male artists like tence that print techniques are central to In any case, like the elephants in a previ- Robert Motherwell and Cy Twombly can her process, while admirably uncompromis- ous exhibition, the variety of human and display a certain European elegance in their ing, may add to the misunderstanding of animal figures in the present show, even work without being expelled from the her work. while affording the artist an opportunity to rough and ready boy’s club of modern But perhaps even more germane is that, exercise the visual wit that finds its verbal American painting. But for a woman artist even as Cult of the Ugly has become equivalent in her titles, are primarily a for- to show as much panache as Firestein does increasingly fashionably in contemporary mal device, serving as imagistic foils for and still have energy to burn is a far riskier art, Firestein has embraced beauty more Firestein’s dynamic gestural pyrotechnics: In business, given the sexual stereotyping that unabashedly with each succeeding exhibi- “Stag Party” a line of stags is set against an prevails, even at this late date, in certain sec- tion. As she has learned to trust in her own expanse of shiny black enamel, enlivened by tors of the art world. innate elegance her surfaces have grown long white drips, a single falling leaf, and Still, on the evidence of Cecily Barth ever more sumptuously appealing, as seen in explosions of ocher; penguins line up like Firestein’s newest exhibition, it seems safe to the recent monotype “You Can Do chorus girls, juxtaposed with a dancing cou- predict that the same qualities which make Anything, But Don’t Step On My Blue ple a la Fred and Ginger, in “Black Tie”; in her work difficult to define and market in Suede Shoes.” another composition (“One Lump or the present art climate will be the very ones In this large work, eight identical collage Two?”), five camels traverse a floral terrain to assure that it will ultimately endure. figures of traditionally costumed umbrella- against a luminous yellow field. wielding Japanese geishas anchor the bot- Splashy effusions of pigment, controlled ––Ed McCormack APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 35 “I Love Manhattan”: Visual Tributes to the Greatest City hile themes are often imposed on Handy’s “Times Square NYC” focuses on Wgroup shows merely as a pretense to the patchwork patterns of Broadway show gather disparate artists at cross purposes posters over a Sbarros pizzeria, with pedes- under a coherent banner, “I Love trians and colorful traffic adding to the lively Manhattan,” a recent exhibition curated by visual cacophony at street-level. Renee Phillips, at Equity Properties Lobby, Then there is Melissa Fleming, whose dig- 850 Third Avenue, was one exhibition that ital prints present the quieter poetry of truly lived up to watertanks and bridges silhouetted dramati- its name. cally against deep blue skies. Fleming also The ten artists gives us her own interpretation of Times in the show were Square as a jumble of neon signs scribbled selected from a onto darkness like Cy Twombly’s elegant national competi- graffiti. tion organized by Manhattan Arts Benny H.V. Andersson International, a mind when he painted “Angels Over twenty year old Manhattan,” a spiritually uplifting little pic- network of ture, in which the city’s glowing lights com- “Artrepreneurs,” petes with the numinous beings soaring of which Phillips, through the night sky. In any case, this an artist career image seems a suitable tribute, as do other counselor and meticulously painted visionary compositions author, is director. by Andersson in the series entitled “The One of several Bill Heard Other Side,” depicting tiny figures in heav- theme exhibitions enly vistas. Melissa Fleming that the organization plans for public spaces The most abstract painter in the show is throughout the city, the show captured the Joanne Turney, whose canvases combine Curator Renee Phillips scored a real suc- indomitable spirit of the city and its people lyricism with rugged tactility in a manner cess with this sharply focused gem of a post 9/11–– even as new reports of possible akin to color field painters such as Jules group show, which held up a mirror to the biological terrorism had some among the Olitski. However, Turney’s scroll painting, city in a suitably public space, inspiring a citizenry sealing their windows with duct “Springtime in NY,” an acrylic on canvas sense of civic pride among all who passed tape. with agate, captures a sense of its subject in through the Equity Properties Lobby. (A In this nonobjective terms. larger version of the “I Love Manhattan” regard, one Donna Cameron, a McDowell fellowship Exhibition, featuring over 35 artists, can be of the most recipient whose avant garde films are in the seen on www.ManhattanArts.com.) relevant collection of MOMA, also takes an abstract ––J. Sanders Eaton works in the approach in works in archival pigment on show was canvas such as “Brooklyn Bridge,” where a Lee, Mok-Il Gerda familiar landmark is schematized in a com- Kastl’s Carlos Esquerra pelling geometric composition. Ink Paintings painting Equally abstract in their own manner, the “Approaching hoofbeats ––The Four digital photographs of Carlos Esguerra Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” That this extract a severe geometry from light and image of sinister symbolic figures emerging shadow on the glassy facades of familiar cor- from clouds above the Manhattan skyline porate sites such as Metlife and Citigroup was actually painted prior to 9/11 made this Center. Esguerra’s pic- work not only powerful but prophetic and tures make us see the garnered the artist much media attention. dynamic thrust of our Raul Manzano, an artist who has had native urban architec- made The Statue of Liberty a recurring ture from new and theme in his work was another auspicious exciting angles. presence. Manzano’s Magic Realist painting Most of the artists in of the statue seen from behind, facing this show, however, toward the Twin Towers, magically restored take a more representa- by the power of art, was especially affecting. tive approach. Patti Lady Liberty also figures prominently in Mollica captures local Bill Heard’s large, horizontal harborscape color in boldly slashing Donna Cameron “Blue on Blue,” as well as in another canvas strokes in paintings of tourists gazing from the observation win- such as “Gridlock,” in which cars, buses and dows in her crown, set against a starry noc- yellow cabs caught in stasis create a strong May 1- 30, 2003 turnal sky. Heard, like Manzano, is a painter composition, and “TKTS,” where a familiar Reception: Thurs. May 1, 6 - 8 pm who imbues realism with strong emotional Times Square ticket outlet comes alive with content. vigorous hues. Fleet Bank Gallery The internationally exhibited Swedish- The C-prints of photographer Jolene Empire State Building born artist Benny H.V. Andersson may or Varley Handy capture similar subjects from 34th St. & 5th Ave., NYC may not have had the victims of 9/11 in yet another highly original perspective. 212 643 2988

36 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Thiebaud’s “Riverscapes” Veer Nearer to the Visionary t almost seems superfluous to say that creations. appearing at once translucent and meaty. IWayne Thiebaud, at age eighty-two, is The six While the manner in which Thiebaud’s one of precious few living masters of con- monumental thickly slathered pigment became a surro- temporary American painting. As his New canvases in gate for cake frosting got him lumped with York dealer Allan Stone puts it, “Thiebaud this show, the “New Realists” earlier in his career, simi- has entered the time-space continuum of revolving larly sumptuous impastos when applied to Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman around the landscape push the envelope nearer to the using landscape as his vehicle instead of Sacramento visionary. Shape and color are tweaked and abstraction.” This is not just any art dealer River Valley, heightened in these new paintings to an speaking, mind you, but one who has had a resolve the optically boggling degree that makes the long, intimate relationship with the major tension retina resonate deliciously. Fields and rivers figures of Abstract Expressionism and has between rep- waver and wiggle. Confectionery rainbows served as an advisor to de Kooning’s estate. resentation pool in the shadows of lollipop trees pop- And the aptness of Stone’s simile is bol- and abstrac- “Fields and Furrows” ping oddly out of shapes that suggest sinu- stered by an off-the-cuff assertion that de tion even ous traffic islands and highway abutments Kooning himself made to this writer some more successfully than his San Francisco that follow the flow of the riverrun along years ago to the effect that “all abstraction cityscapes, with their steeply veering per- the serpentine topology. is based on landscape anyway.” spectives, in that the elements of their com- Thiebaud’s supreme confidence as a Although Thiebaud first gained recogni- positions are arranged more flatly on the mature painter fully in command of his tion in the 1960s with his famous paintings picture plane. In them, serpentine water- hard-won gifts enables him to take poetic of pies and cakes, which were misconstrued ways viewed from vertiginous aerial angles liberties that would be foolhardy for a less to the point that some critics classified him wind through land masses that create pat- experienced, not to mention less brilliant, as a Pop artist, from the onset his work was terns as alien to anything commonly painter. He does not so much abstract from really all about painterly delectation; and encountered in nature as the so-called nature as reinvent nature for his own pur- while he has also proved himself to be a for- “crop circles” whose origins have puzzled poses with an almost godlike arrogance that midable figure painter, it is his mature land- geologists for decades. makes one think of how reckless–– even scape paintings that will surely secure his The colors that Thiebaud employs in crazy!–– some of Picasso’s formal choices place in art history. these paintings are just as unearthly, ranging must have appeared before they became so For, as seen in his retrospective at the from pale violet, to lime green, to pink and familiar a part of our visual vocabulary. Whitney Museum in 2001, as well as in his peach and purple hues of a kandy-kolored Indeed, some of Thiebaud’s moves and recent exhibition of “Riverscapes” at Allan incandescence that one would be equally choices seem just that bold, even in an era Stone Gallery, 113 East 90th Street, (which hard put to locate in nature. Furrowed fields when so much stylistic innovation has gone originated in October 2002 at Paul shed light like neon tubes. Swelling intestin- under the bridge, so to speak, that it is Thiebaud Gallery, in San Francisco and will al curves along riverbanks emit their own remarkably difficult for any artist, no matter be on view at Faggionato Fine Arts, in weird luminescence. Bodies of water that how gifted, to seem truly original anymore. London, from April 8 to May 24), also appear lit from within like fishtanks are Thiebaud’s landscapes are his most unique limned smoothly in offbeat pastel shades, ––Ed McCormack •CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED• SERVICES Manhattan Arts International 20th Anniversary Established Chelsea Gallery reviews artist port- PHOTOGRAPHY FOR ARTISTS Specializing competition. All styles and media. Exhibition, folios monthly. Send sase or visit for 20 years in quality slides & 4 & 5 trans- website exposure, more. Jurors: Nancy di www.nohogallery.com for application form. parencies of fine art. Bob Sasson, 212.675.0973 Benedetto, art historian and critic, lecturer at Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, former Dean, NY 10001. 212 367 7063 OPPORTUNITIES Pratt Institute; and Renee Phillips, author of RECENT WORK SHOWCASE 2003, NYC New York Contemporary Art Galleries, lectur- WWW.NEWYORKARTWORLD.COM group exhibition and $9000.00 awards. Deadline er and member of International Association of is currently reviewing artists portfolios for April 30. Send SASE for prospectus: Slow Art Art Critics. Entry deadline: June 15. Send web gallery showcase. 212-228-0657 Productions, 870 Sixth Avenue., NYC 10001. SASE to Manhattan Arts International, 200 E-mail [email protected] 14TH annual Juried Competition at VIRIDI- East 72 Street, Suite 26L-GS, New York, NY 17-yr.-old established midtown west interna- AN'S new Chelsea location: 10021 or go to www.ManhattanArts.com. tional gallery, seeks new artists for next season. July 1 to July 19, 2003. Juror: Robert Street level. Share cost. Call 212-315-2740 Rosenblum: Curator, Guggenheim Museum, WARD-NASSE CHELSEA: Exhibit now. Contributing Editor ArtForum and NYU Ground floor, non-profit co-op; very low fees. WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION welcomes Professor. Cash Prizes, Group Show, 516 W 29 St, NY, NY 10001 Call 212-594-7283 members from all areas. 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JUROR: ANNE UMLAND, BELANTHI GALLERY 25th ANNIVERSARY Efficient reliable driver/distributer, art mover ASSOCIATE CURATOR, DEPARTMENT OF CELEBRATION 2003-2004 Seasons with vehicle available to make your deliveries PAINTING & SCULPTURE, THE MUSE- For: A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION or moves. Personable, self-starter with art UM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK CITY. Submit 60 slides, phone # & SASE To: world references and reasonable rates. Call SHOW: June 25th-July 12, 2003. SLIDES Paulette Hios, Pres Belanthi Ent. Inc. 142 Alberto at 718.459.4457 DUE: May 9th. Send SASE for PROSPEC- Court St. Bklyn NY 11201 Further info will be TUS TO: Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th 4th provided after viewing Fl., New York, NY 10001. Call: 646-230-0056 APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 37 The Many Faces of Black Art at Broadway Mall hile Black History Month exhibitions be the specialty of Weldon Ryan, whose two Eleanor Gilpatrick, on the other hand, Wpresent familiar names, such as Jacob large canvases were monumental images of captures the attitudes of musicians playing in Lawrence, Bob Thompson and Romare an African queen wearing only a blue tur- streets and subways with considerable Bearden, less familiar artists also worthy of ban. Her lithe dancer’s body struck graceful insight and painterly panache. Gilpatrick’s attention are featured in “Black is Blue and postures, half hidden by pink curtains. convincing yet casual realist style suits such Other Colors Too,” currated recently by Frequent exhibitor Neeci Sims was repre- unassuming subjects auspiciously. Dee Winfield for the West Side Arts sented by a strong painting of a purple rose Unassuming in its own manner, yet char- Coalition, at Broadway Mall Community set against a violet and green leaves, all in acteristically compelling, is Dee Winfield's Center, Broadway and 96th Street. deep tones that lend the image an emblem- “Violets for Dora.” A floral painting with David Shrobe, who recently had an atic sense of mystery. Here, as in a contrast- strong abstract qualities akin to those in the impressive solo show at The Interchurch ingly luminous skyscape in delicate pinks, work of Georgia O’keeffe, it is limned with Center, showed a characteristically busy blues, purples and yellows, Sims imbues a the same smooth sensuality that makes composition with a stylized face playing hide simple subject with drama and significance. Winfield's more familiar portraits of beauti- and seek among abstract forms, as well as a Al Johnson made a pointed moral com- ful black women so aesthetically alluring. figurative painting distorted in a manner ment with a painting of three African masks By contrast Joey Infante’s “Into the akin to Francis Bacon. Both revealed a entitled “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak Light” is appealing for its subdued colors prodigiously gifted young painter trying on No Evil.” Johnson seemed to be reclaiming and exotic imagery, with the stylized out- modes and testing his powers. his heritage from Picasso and others who lines of running giraffes set against a scum- The charcoal drawings of William Hunt would exploit African Masks for their own bled textural ground and illuminated by a combine the Afrocentric graphic power of purposes. blazing yellow sun. Charles White with a more updated Hip Imo Nse Imeh puts a strong grasp of clas- Then there is musician/painter Dick Hop sensibility. Hunt’s “Father and Son” sical anatomy to the service of a thoroughly Griffin, whose large abstract canvas contin- depicted a baby supported by a man’s contemporary sensibility in symbolic paint- ues his “Love in the Air” series, unveiled in flowing dreadlocks as though floating on ings featuring monumental figures emerg- a previous group show in the same venue. a cloud, while his multifigure composition ing from dark grounds with titles such as In this buoyant composition, swift, bold “Diversity” was a casual catalog of African- “On Responsibility” and “Retained strokes of purple and splashes of red interact American styles and types wittily combined Ideologies.” Imeh’s dynamic compositions on a brilliant yellow ground creating an with a hand presenting the artist’s business seem to cry out for huge walls and social effect so musical as to indicate that Griffin card. murals in the manner of Jose Clemente sees his two art forms as interchangeable. Amazonian female nudes would appear to Orozco. ––Peter Wiley At Phoenix, a Savvy Director’s Smart Choices ounded in 1958, Phoenix Gallery, now and cut-out shapes, creating the sense that her oil on canvas, with its “phantom” Flocated at 568 Broadway, recently pre- one had stepped inside a collage. hard-edge forms, while Emilie Snyder jux- sented a group show called, “Global Other complementary contrasts: the taposed symbols such as a heart, a ladder, Crossroads –– Director’s Choice,” artfully near-perfect synthesis of sophisticated and the shadowy outline of a simplified curated by director Linda Handler, herself draftsmanship and childlike freedom in Eva bird in a symbolic semi abstract composi- a respected sculptor. Bouzard-Hui’s small pencil drawings, and tion. Paul Gazda showed a characteristically The first thing that struck one was how neo-fauvist boldness in Marie-Louise tactile screen assemblage in which a broken well the show represented postmodern plu- McHugh’s big oil of an upside-down blue plate and five sets of rugged work gloves ralism, from the delightful zaniness of nude set against a vibrant red ground; a suggested an altercation at dinner, while Chris Sharp’s sculpture of a larger than life meticulously executed abstract icon in egg Pamela Bennett Ader employed contrast- polka-dot giraffe man (or whatever it tempera and eggshell mosaic on wood by ingly delicate abstract effusions of rosy was!), to the poetic sobriety of Gretl Joseph Di Bella, and small, swiftly brushed hues in her lyrical abstract oil. Bauer’s stringed wall-assemblage; from oil on unsized canvas by Myung Kim, Anna Bisso’s jigsaw shapes and blotchy Phyllis Carlin’s totemic painted floor sculp- notable for its Zen-like grace; Dorothy paint application lent her small yet strong ture, in which whimsical forms on long Deon’s dazzling mixed media piece, with painting a figuratively allusive energy, while rods simultaneously evoke flowers and intricate circular shapes bubbling up all Joseph Brown’s deadpan self portrait pro- birds, to Pamela Flynn’s mixed media over two plastic panels, suggesting frantic jected a haunting presence, despite its pale, piece, in which sparkling stars and delicate- cellular activity, and Gerri Moore’s almost diffident execution. Joan ly stitched collage elements give way to the poignant two-part documentation of a Goldsmith’s vigorous gestural abstraction jolting photo-image of a dead deer in funeral, comprised of a sequence of sketchy juxtaposed swirling linear strokes and drips snow; from an evocative large mixed media ink drawings resembling a filmic story- with checkerboard squares to create con- painting by Jun Ho Lee, juxtaposing print- board and a tiny faux-naif oil of a lone trasts and tensions; Kurt Delbanco showed ed and photographic imagery within an mourner sitting beside a huge basket of a buoyant linear abstraction, and Cecily austere abstract format to convey a diaristic flowers; a characteristic abstract “ twisted Barth Firestein (whose solo exhibition is resonance, to Edward Fletcher’s intriguing print” painting by the French artist Jean- reviewed elsewhere in this issue) was repre- oil of a bizarrely distorted guitar player. Pierre Vuillaume, whose impressive first sented by a small monotype with all the Steven Dono’s small sculpture of an solo show in the same venue was recently vigor, energy, and humor of her more abstract form resembling a battleship gray reviewed in these pages, and an affectingly familiar large works. spider squatting over a golden orb was as direct black and white photograph by Choosing one representative work by unique in its own way as his more familiar Robert Blank of Vietnamese rice farmers each artist, Linda Handler showcased the room-sized installations, while Hope laboring in a field. diversity and quality that accounts for Carter’s nearby room-sized installation Susanne Nestory employed pink and tan- Phoenix Gallery’s longevity. played wittily with the idea of scale with gerine hues with a subtlety reminiscent of scattered elements such as strings, stones, Ad Reinhardt’s black on black paintings in ––J. Sanders Eaton 38 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 Geneviève: A Vivacious Virtuoso from Paris hile even the single name by which pigment. in her love of life and art and transmits this Wshe is known sounds quintessentially In another painting, a still life is codified enthusiasm to her paintings through her French, the versatile artist called Geneviève, in a more semi-abstract manner, with the rhapsodic approach to color. In her sculp- who lives and works in Paris, actually hails vase and flowers reduced to stylized areas of tures it comes across in the way her free- from Montana, and seems in that regard to color that enact an energetic angular dance wheeling forms command space and con- be one of her own imaginative creations. In in homage to the fractured planes of front the viewer with their dynamic anatom- any case, Geneviève transcends national Cubism. ical distortions. identities and cultural categories to create Yet another major picture presents an Perhaps the fact that she is a painter as her own passionate reality in her exhibition image of a magnificent architectural anom- well as a sculptor has helped Geneviève to at Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, from aly that fills the composition with luminous transcend the supposed physical limitations May 12 through May 31, with a reception color like a stained glass cathedral, and is of three-dimensional form, for she seems to for the artist, May 14, from 6 to 8 pm. further enlivened by forms that suggest fig- recognize no boundaries. In this regard the A former student of the Russian sculptor ures and landscape elements as though plasticity of her figures seems akin to that in Zadkin, Geneviève is equally proficient as a viewed through a kaleidoscope. Here, too, the sculptures of the painter Willem de painter and a sculptor. Her work in each Geneviève shows her sophisticated aware- Kooning. In fact, some of Geneviève’s medium shares similar concerns pieces have similarly craggy with the expressive human fig- surfaces and forms that flare ure as a vehicle for conveying out in a similar manner, as her exuberant energy and zest though the figure is metamor- for life. In her paintings and in phosing before one’s very her sculptures, which are often eyes. painted as well, there is a Geneviève, however, seems romantic lyricism which can be less concerned with abstract compared to that of Marc qualities in sculpture than Chagall. Her figures move does de Kooning––or perhaps through fanciful landscapes one should say that the with a similar sense of weight- abstract emerges through the lessness and her colors are every humanistic in her work. bit as magical and harmonious. Which is to say, the passion Yet, being a postmodern artist, with which she invests her fig- Geneviève also displays a more ures provokes an unselfcon- contemporary sensibility akin to scious expressiveness that pro- that of the Italian neoexpres- vides the abstract thrust of her sionists of the pieces. “Transavantgarde” movement This emotional expressive- who emerged in the 1970s. ness invests her sculptures In the latter regard, with a presence and a power Geneviere’s work seems to that is undeniable, be the sub- share a particular kinship with ject the anguish of a powerful- that of Sandro Chia for its free- ly contorted crucifixion or the wheeling imagery and coloristic joy of a cellist embracing his richness, as well as an ability to instrument as though it were build on the accomplishments a lover. Her pieces cover the of predecessors like Chagall, entire range of human experi- adding a touch of contempo- ence and emotion, even while rary irony to offset the saccha- providing purely aesthetic rine sentiments of an earlier pleasure with their graceful time. As a Francophile who has contours, volumic dynamism, adopted Paris as her home, she and exquisite balances of posi- has obviously also soaked up tive and negative spaces. some of the influence and That Geneviève also imparts atmosphere of the School of color to some of her pieces enables her to add yet another Paris in terms of her chromatic “Yin & Yang” Plastic-Epoxite 39x35x25cm harmonies and willingness to expressive element and com- pay tribute to beauty rather bine her two mediums in a than indulging in the gratuitous grotesque- ness of the various schools of modernism, unique manner, as seen in her sculpture of a ness that mars much postmodern painting. which she absorbs and transforms for her reposeful female nude, the different parts of In one of her paintings, for example, bril- own purposes. her body enlivened by bright areas of yel- liant floral bouquets dominate the fore- Geneviève’s gift for transforming art his- low, pink, blue, and green, suggesting both ground of the composition, giving way to torical precedents is equally evident in a the vogue for “body painting” of the 1960s images of a church set against a blue sky and painting in which forms that resemble tree and a figure sprung to life out of a Fauvist other picturesque elements. The entire com- branches adorned by Autumn leaves and set canvas. position is enlivened by Geneviève’s buoyant against a pale blue sky hark back to the In this piece, as in all of her work in both brushstrokes and takes on a sense of height- abstractions of Kandinsky, even while the of her mediums, Geneviève reveals herself to ened reality, as though she has captured the picture is filled with her own special lyricism be an inventive and intrepid talent whose very soul of a lovely spring day and made its and stamped with her inimitable stylistic sig- work bears serious notice. fleeting qualities poignantly immutable in nature. She appears completely uninhibited ––Laurel Kronenberger APRIL/MAY 2003 GALLERY&STUDIO 39 A Major Latin American Sampler at Agora Gallery lthough a strong strain of surrealism has of their own, reflecting Renato Dorfman’s forms, which he paints to the exclusion of Aalways run through the modern art of belief that “the earth is a living being.” all else. Like Giorgio Morandi’s famous Latin America, other forms of figuration, The paintings of Adan Dorfman are arrangements of bottles, Vitor Azambuja’s ranging from the actual through the fantas- notable for their coloristic intensity, as well flowers are a vehicle for endless chromatic tic, also appear to take precedence over as for their emotionally charged figurative and formal exploration, capturing their deli- abstraction in that area of the world. At distortions. Like the American painter Peter cate tonalities and shapes with such subtle, least, a preference for humanistic expression Saul, Adan Dorfman is not afraid to verge sumptuous variety as to make other subject over formal experiment was evident in the on the grotesque in his desire to embody matter seem superfluous. Latin American Fine Art Exhibition, a com- and personify a range of human feelings, The Argentinean painter Susana Bonnet, prehensive survey seen recently art Agora from anguish to ecstasy, and his passion on the other hand, explores a variety of sub- Gallery, 415 West Broadway, in jects, both figurative and abstract. Soho. Whether painting figures swarm- One of the show’s mature ing around an oversized apple or masters, a veteran of over 300 luminous, flaring nonobjective exhibitions in South America, forms, Bonnet imbues all of her Europe, and the U.S., is the oils with a visionary quality that Portuguese artist known as suggests spiritual striving. Pedro Portugal. An accom- The paintings of Marynes Avila, plished romantic realist repre- also Argentinean, reveal a contrast- sented here by characteristically ingly Pop sensibility. Often depict- fanciful figure paintings in a ing stylized images of entwined style that combines aspects of lovers in bold outlines and brilliant the Baroque and the neoclassi- primaries, Avila’s lively oils com- cal in a poetic postmodern syn- bine qualities of stained glass and thesis. comic strips in a lively personal Mexican artists have long synthesis. made a considerable contribu- The Venezuelan artist Jorge tion to the surreal tradition, Humberto Gonçalves-Romero and are particularly adept at puts his faith in the untrammeled combining it with the folkloric, gesture, employing acrylics, ink, as seen in the paintings of and mixed media to create compo- Lorena Rodriguez, where ele- Opening reception for the Latin American Exhibition at sitions in which swiftly drawn male ments of Mayan and Aztec cul- Agora Gallery and female figures are often super- ture haunt Dali-esque dream- imposed or merged amid splashy scapes. Rodriguez possesses the technical lends his compositions great energy. color areas. More concerned with capturing proficiency to imbue the most fabulous Then there is Sabrina Villasenor, who was the energies and personalities of human imagery with a striking verisimilitude. included in two Altar for the Dead Cultural beings than representing them with anatom- Another gifted Mexican artist, Rodrigo events in Mexico and Canada, and whose ical accuracy, Gonçalves-Romero has Hernandez, creates tactile works in which earthy mixed media paintings merge ele- evolved a vigorous and exhilarating gestural paint and mixed media take on the weight ments of the figure and landscape in a high- freedom. and depth of sculpture, with mixtures of dry ly original manner. Sensual shapes, anatom- The human gaze as mirror to the soul is pigment, tobacco, soil and other natural ically allusive yet simultaneously elusive, a favorite subject in the paintings of substances secreted in compartments, merge boldly in Villasenor’s paintings, Francisca Rota-Loiseau, who has found lending his pieces a sense of mystery and suggesting the mythic couplings of nature some of her most compelling portrait sub- ritual. Like his great countryman Rufino deities. jects on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, Tamayo, Hernandez filters elements of One of the more ostensibly abstract Emeralds, and Chat. Rota-Loiseau’s acrylic primitivism through a sophisticated painters in the exhibition is Tuma Pacheco, on canvas of a woman in a green head scarf contemporary sensibility. the scion of an artistic family, who is and veil regarding the viewer with deep, Although born in Mexico City and acute- inspired by Mayan culture, along with a dark eyes is an especially strong example of ly aware of her heritage, Karen Deicas host of more modern influences, to create her work. DePodesta tends to rely on what she calls oils animated by brilliant color and a frenetic Colombian artist Fernando Tovar is “subconscious perceptions,” rather than gestural energy. Although initially seduced known for his paintings of beautiful women, recognizable cultural symbols. Her by bold chromatic and tactile qualities, the but he also imbues the fruits in his still life peculiarly engaging paintings, which present viewer soon discerns human and animal fig- paintings with a striking sensuality. With faceless stylized figures in geometric settings, ures half submerged in Tuma Pacheco’s meticulous, light filled Magic Realism, in are at once whimsical and psychologically tides of surging pigment. pristine compositions apparently informed compelling. By contrast, the figure comes to the fore- by his architectural training, Tovar lends Two brothers, also from Mexico City, take front in the work of Brazilian realist these and other objects nature mortise a distinctly different approaches to materials Fernanda Veriga, whose oils on canvas of metaphysical suggestiveness that transcends and subject matter, yet their work shares a women with formidable proportions have genre. fluid expressiveness. The sculptor Renato qualities in common with the paintings of This was the second such survey of Latin Dorfman creates mixed media pieces in Lucian Freud. In both her clothed and nude American art at Agora Gallery in two years. which human figures and other organic figures, Fernanda Veriga captures the palpa- And on the strength of its success, one can forms command space with their flowing ble presence of her plus-size models with only hope that this thoroughly enjoyable contours. In his hands, clay becomes a con- affection and impressive painterly panache. show will continue as an annual event. duit to a hidden world, where sensual semi- Another artist from Brazil, Vitor ––Lawrence Downes abstract forms take on a phantasmagoric life Azambuja, finds his sole inspiration in floral 40 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003 “Our Town” Acrylic on canvas 24" X 26" Town” “Our “Venus Descending” Acrylic 50" X 38" Descending” “Venus JOHN ARRUDA Ruth Poniarski A retrospective of paintings & drawings Atlantis 1973-2003 May 8 - 30, 2003 April 5 - May 3, 2003 Reception: Thursday May 8, 6-8pm Reception: Saturday April 5, 7- 9pm Jadite Gallery Belanthi Gallery 413 West 50th St, NYC 10019 142 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY Mon - Sat 12 - 6pm 212 315 2740 www.jadite.com Mon - Sat 12 - 7pm • 718 855 2769 Artist Website: www.geocities.com/ruthon/ Amy Bright Unfried Three Ways of Looking at the Figure

April 17 - May 1, 2003 Reception: Tues April 22, 6 - 8pm

National Arts Club 15 Gramercy Park South New York, NY 10003 Mon - Fri 10- 5pm • Sat & Sun 12 - 5pm

MARIE-LOUISE McHUGH All About Food April 30 - May 24, 2003

Phoenix Gallery 568 Broadway at Prince St. #607 NYC 10012 • 212 226 8711 Fax 212 343 7303 www.phoenix-gallery.com Tues - Sat 11- 5:30pm

“Fish for Dinner” Oil on canvas 9" X 12" “Clear-cut Eagle” acrylic on canvas 20" x 16" www.alanmunro.org CBJ Museum, Juneau Alaska, March 28 - April 19, 2003

GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2003