NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com VOL. 11 NO. 2 New York GALLERY&STUDIO The World of the Working Artist Alfred KUBIN KUBIN KUBIN KUBIN (1877-1959) Die Dame auf dem Pferd (The Lady on the Horse), ca. 1900-01 Pen and ink, wash, and spray on paper 39.7 x 31 cm (15 5/8 x 12 1/4 in.) Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv Alfred Kubin in the Night Museum Rediscovering a lost Austrian master of the macabre at Neue Galerie New York

by Ed McCormack, pg. 20 JESSICA FROMM Linear Visions “021” Oil on canvas 48” x 36” 48” Oil on canvas “021” November 25 - December 20, 2008 Catalog Available

530 West 25th St., NYC, 10001 Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm 212 367 7063 www.nohogallery.com

GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 VINCENT ARCILESI Arcilesi in Mexico Paintings and Drawings

Pyramid of the Sun, 2007 - 08, oil on canvas, 3panels, 9ft x 18ft November 18 - December 7, 2008 Broome Street Gallery 498 Broome Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 6pm 212 226 6085 Some Editorial Afterthoughts on the Magnificent Turner Exhibition at the Met by Ed McCormack

I can’t quote from it verbatim, because as soon as I read it the magazine flew from my hand as though of its own accord, landing at the opposite end of my writing room, and must have been been disposed of during one of this veritable garbage gar- den’s periodic prunings. But in a “Critic’s Notebook” column of the New Yorker, G&S Peter Schjeldahl wrote something to the effect that J.M.W. Turner was his century’s equivalent of Jeff Koons—a comparison that can only be charitably attributed to an Highlights errant synapse or the convenient fact that when the magnificent Turner exhibition opened at the Met this past June, Koons’s silly “Balloon Dog,” along with two other equally fatuous sculptures, was already installed on the museum roof. On the Cover: Granted, Turner was something of a showman himself, given to such public dis- One critic called Alfred Kubin’s plays as retouching his canvases on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy, not only first exhibition in Berlin in 1902 with turpentine and powdered pigments, but with snuff, stale beer, and even spit. To “a cry for help.” But Paul Klee and paint one of his tumultuous marinescapes, he claimed, “I had the sailors lash me to Vasily Kandinsky were already among the mast to observe it. I was lashed for four hours and I did not expect to escape,but I felt bound to record it if I did.” Kubin’s admirers. His first American Few painters of his time provoked as much controversy: If Constable famously com- museum exhibition shows why. mented, “He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and airy,” a less enthusi- astic critic characterized one of his works as “a mass of soapsuds and whitewash.” Turner’s penchant for hyperbolic bloviation and bombast is reflected in the very title of the specific work to which that critic objected: “Snowstorm—Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel Left Harwhich.” Here, as in many of the other windy annotations with which he burdened his canvases, Turner seems intent on confirming the stereotype of British painting as “too literary,” right down to referring to himself as the “author” rather than the painter. However, the picture itself is so ostensibly abstract, it boggles the mind to realize pg. 35 that, when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842, provoking such vio- lent critical reaction, Paul Cezanne was only two years old. But while it would be pg. 5 tempting to tout Turner as an earlier modernist precursor than Cezanne, forging a pg. 4 path to Abstract Expressionism without passing through the rigid portals of Cubism, the flaws in that argument—the literal flies in its painterly ointment, so to speak— are the tiny figures that often inhabit Turner’s grand vistas so stiffly as to not seem part of the same composition. Stuck like static decals on his atmospheric landscapes, or tossed by shipwreck onto his stormy seas (particularly in sensational historical scenes such as “The Battle of Trafalgar”), they belie the advanced plasticity of his endeavor, anchoring his canvases in anecdote. So while Monet and Pissaro were said to have been impressed, and may have even pg. 8 been somewhat influenced, by the Englishman’s flashy way with light when they visited pg. 6 London in 1870, such vestiges of the Academy amid all the fireworks probably eased pg. 40 any fears the two Impressionists may have harbored about being surpassed. The disparity between aesthetic unity and fussy allegory is more successfully blurred in Turner’s watercolors—particularly his series on “The Burning of the Houses of Parliament,” where the historical significance of the buildings caught in the great conflagration is secondary to the immediate effect of the artist’s incandescent washes pg. 39 and the spare minimalism of his forms. Naturally, these sketchier works, with great bursts of flame and billowing smoke flying skyward and reflected in the waters of the Thames, appeal to contemporary taste by virtue of their spontaneity. They appear to GALLERY&STUDIO forecast all manner of referents, from the lyrical early abstractions of Philip Guston to the amorphousness of the Color Field movement. An International Art Journal Still, it is in the majestic major oils, such as “Sun-Storm, Avalanche and PUBLISHED BY Inundation—a Scene on the Upper Part of the Val d’Aouste, Piedmont,” that © Turner’s excesses and virtues do battle most spectacularly. (“To speak of these works as EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2008 pictures, would be an abuse of language,” sneered a critic for Athenaeum after view- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ing that painting, while John Ruskin called it one of Turner’s “mightiest works.”) 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 And it was to such ambitious and uneven productions that Jeannie and I were drawn back again and again, over several leisurely evenings at the Met, before the (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] show closed in late September. One stood before them with a kind of stupification, thrilled that painting could still be so beguiling, so confounding. Whether or not EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack Turner had much influence on modern painting seemed a moot point. What really MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack mattered was that he had been a terror to his contemporaries and still remains, in his SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner own eccentric way, such a bright and savage force. DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Maureen Flynn * * * www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com

2 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009

Marie-Hélène Beaudry: The School Boy as Mercury arie-Hélène Beaudry has to be one progress in a sequence set Mof contemporary art’s most astute in space and time. interpreters of the emotional minefield At first the runner, that is childhood. In a previous exhibition who can remind one of by Beaudry last year at Caelum Gallery, in the young Arthur Chelsea, the celebrated Quebec artist Rimbaud, his thatchy showed a series of paintings in which she blondish hair blowing in brought a cute little girl doll to life in the the breeze, appears to be manner of a female Pinocchio. In that set against the map of a show, which also included a related video city, with the diagrammat- installation by Beaudry, the little doll girl ic depiction of its streets, was depicted romping mischievously by roads and public parks the seaside in the company of a seemingly partially obscured in the less animate companion, toward whom manner of palimpsests she behaved in a manner often less than beneath semi-transparent gentle. At times, the incoming waves watercolor washes and threatened to engulf and wash them away drips. But on closer in its undertow, but the brave little living inspection the schema- doll hardly seemed to notice. Nor did she tized linear networks par- seem aware, when she impishly lifted her tially showing through the little red skirt to show off her blank little thin paint turn out to be doll bottom, that it can be dangerous for parts of tailoring patterns little girls to behave in such a way. for clothing with names Indeed, one of the recurring themes in such as Butterick, Marie-Hélène Beaudry’s work appears to McCall’s, and Vogue that, be the resilience of children; how most of for those of us who had them survive to become most of us. mothers who sewed, can Either through dumb luck or their own trigger spasms of memory inner resources, they survive the bum- and nostalgia as certainly bling psychological brutality of their par- as Proust’s Madeleine. ents (“They fuck you up, your mum and Given the sequential dad / They may not mean to, but they nature of the series, the do,” go the wonderful opening lines of a boy’s run seems to chart a famous verse by the distinguished British symbolic journey within a poet Philip Larkin); they survive insensi- narrative, the meaning of tive, bored, or bullying teachers; pervert- which, as in Beaudry’s ed priests who prey rather than praying; exhibition last year, is as playing in traffic; taking candy from deliberately blurred as the strangers, and all manner of other dangers patterns underneath the to grow up more or less sane and intact. paint by what I referred to It is this miracle of simple survival, in a review of that earlier either by fight or by flight, that Beaudry show as the artist’s post- seems once again to be celebrating in her modernist aversion to new series of paintings, “Impulse to run,” denouements and closure. in her sixth solo show at Caelum Gallery, In the most general 508-526 West 26th Street, on view from sense, one can only sur- November 25 to December 20 with a mise that the “impulse to reception on December 4 from 6 to 8pm. run” is provoked by the The protagonist of Beaudry’s new boy’s desire to achieve the series is a preadolescent boy dressed in autonomy that is denied what appears to be a French (perhaps to the very young by par- French Canadian) school uniform consist- ents, teachers, and all the ing of a pinkish white shirt, grayish-blue other adult ogres that I Three paintings from the “Impulse To Run” series short trousers, and a sweater of the same mentioned earlier; that like color, which he wears tied around his the rebellious little hero of sense of ancient Chinese scroll paintings, shoulders like a cape, high white socks, the great French writer Jules Renard’s Marie-Hélène Beaudry imbues her sprint- and running shoes. He is painted in a 1894 novel “Carrot Top” (“Poil de ing school boy with the heroic urgency of luminous airy realist style reminiscent of Carotte”), he is engaged in an arduous a youthful messenger in an epic myth. watercolor illustrations in old fashioned effort to, as Thomas Szasz puts it, “sur- Here, as in her previous exhibition in the children’s books, and in every picture in vive the Great War of Childhood.” same venue, her ability to attach universal the series he is running. He is the only Through the limped elegance of her significance to such a simple subject sug- figure in the composition, although in style, which marries quaint figurative gests a major talent. some pictures he is seen twice in slightly charm to abstract areas of liquefied pig- different positions, either running further ment as subtly evocative as coffee stains, ahead or partially disappearing off the the painterly graffiti of Cy Twombly, or edge of the picture, as if to indicate his the misty atmospherics and lyrical spatial ––Ed McCormack

4 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Vincent Arcilesi: Venus and Apollo Revisited in Mexico City s the ga-ga reaction of an unsuspecting warriors, adopted from a Mayan mural, hov- and ritual dances abound. However, in the Acable TV technician who passed ering in a cloud near the golden pyramid. next two panels, Arcilesi shifts into full- through the artist’s downtown loft the In the first panel, a young man performs frontal fantasy mode,with nude figures morning we previewed his latest paintings an abandoned pre-Lenten dance in a jaguar appearing among others in native dress. demonstrated, the seduction of the viewer skin; a small boy executes a jig-like step, The central nude, described by the artist has always been foremost in the art of sporting spotted body makeup; a little as “an American Venus,” stands slightly to Vincent Arcilesi whose new solo show flower girl, resembling a modestly clothed the right of a Spanish flag on its tall pole, “Arcilesi in Mexico” is at Broome Street Mexican offspring of Gauguin’s Tahitian her magnetic, wide-eyed gaze drawing the Gallery, 498 Broome Street from November muses, prepares to hawk her wares to a viewer into the picture space. Crouching at 18 through December 7. And her side in the subordinate pos- never has Arcilesi had a more ture that many of Arcilesi’s male seductive subject than figures assume in the presence “Pyramid of the Sun,” the of his ravishing female nudes, is magnificent 9 by 18 foot cen- a young “Mexican Apollo.” terpiece of his new exhibition, Hand to bearded chin, Thinker- inspired by a sojourn to like, he looks away, as thought Mexico City, as well as by intent, however hopelessly, on Ingres’ uncompleted mural resisting her charms. “The Golden Age,” which Quite the opposite attitude depicted “a time when work is displayed by a bolder youth, wasn’t necessary and the done up in the elaborate head- world was an Eden peopled dress and loincloth of an Aztec by ‘beautiful idlers.’” god, who has dropped to his Of themselves, beautiful knees and now thrusts out his idlers are not a new subject pelvis like Elvis, as he brandishes for Arcilesi. Usually unen- a ceremonial plant, as though to cumbered by clothing, they capture the attention of a stat- have long been a staple of his uesque blond “European mural-scale canvases, which, Venus.” As coolly beautiful as combined, constitute a world the young Catherine Deneuve, tour of great cities liberated she stands with her back to him, by the artist’s singularly sen- striking a pose at once aloof and “Catedral Metropolitana” sual imagination. Anyone seductive. Although she appears who has been following his career for some beautiful auburn-haired tourist in an to glance askance over one creamy shoulder time would probably agree that Arcilesi embroidered red Mexican dress; and a at the young man’s macho posturing, who finds his own inner Eden wherever he trav- white-clad Indian couple poses stiffly can say what this imperious Venus is really els: In Rome, lovers entwined in the sultry in the middle distance, as though for a feeling? night air outside the Colosseum; in wedding photo. The subtle (and sometimes not so sub- London, nude bathers enacted a pastoral tle) eroticism that permeates Arcilesi’s idyll in St. James’s Park; in Morocco, a mural-scale travel paintings, amounting to lounging pasha trotted out his comely much more than a subtext to their many harem in front of Al Badi Palace, amid a intriguing cultural symbols, carries over into procession of robed Moroccan musicians; in his smaller oils of imaginary tourists in hotel Russia, Arcilesi’s naked legions upstaged the rooms: a topless woman trying on a som- Winter Palace, the Cathedral of the brero; a voluptuous nude sprawling on a Resurrection, and the statue of Lenin in an blue cloth; a naked man kneeling before his imaginatively reconfigured Palace Square. standing lover with all the wonderment of No previous location, however, has Pygmalion in the precise second when his inspired Arcilesi to take more poetic license ivory statue sprang to life. than Mexico City, where, much to his The strong red, green, and golden ocher delight, the artist found that vestiges of hues of the Mexican flag—a recurring motif, Mayan culture still mingle freely with seen blowing in the breeze through hotel Catholic iconography. For what could possi- windows or crowning architectural composi- bly be more inspiring for an artist who has tions such as “Palacio Nacional, Mexico always combined a reverence for City”–– seem to set the tone for a new col- Renaissance figuration with a life-affirming oristic heightening that imparts an almost personal hedonism than the city’s unlikely Fauvist intensity to some of these new paint- confluence of conquistadore-instituted ings. And while Arcilesi still retains the tem- Christianity and indigenous paganism? “From Hotel Majestic 1” pering grasp of classical draftsmanship that The tempestuous marriage of Spanish has made him one of our most accom- and Indian cultures is dynamically reflected If not for the visionary apparition of the plished contemporary realists, a somewhat in the disparate landmarks that anchor the crucifixion––appropriated by Arcilesi from a looser handling of clouds, foliage and other opposite poles of “Pyramid of the Sun” ’s painting by Alonso Cano in the Hermitage details imparts unprecedented gestural vigor sprawling three-panel composition: a float- Museum and set afloat over the cathedral’s to his vibrant new paintings. ing crucifixion and the Catedral white stucco facade—this panel could repre- Metropolitana (the city’s largest church) on sent the objective reality of Mexico City ––Ed McCormack the left and on the right, a frieze of four during Holy Week, when exotic costumes NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 Dorothy A. Culpepper: The Painting as a Universe Unto Itself o say that Dorothy A. Culpepper, paintings, although they can often be quite dense foliage. Near the center, however, the Twhose work is on view in the year- large, has less to do with physical scale than composition opens into a roughly circular round salon exhibition at Montserrat with the sense of vital energy that she clearing, providing a placid place of respite Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27th achieves with color and gesture. for the eye, comprised of serene expanses of Street, paints like a force of nature is not to Indeed, Culpepper’s paintings seem to green and blue that might suggest a literal make an histrionic statement for its own succeed primarily by virtue of her ability to reading of grass and sky... except for the sake, but merely to get as close as possible suggest a kind of space which transcends impulsive calligraphy with which Culpepper to an accurate description of the sensory physical considerations altogether, transport- suddenly sees fit to disrupt this window on affect that her untrammeled gestures have ing the viewer through a kind of immediate the Edenic and subvert any tendency on the upon the receptive viewer. sensory experience which is entirely untaint- part of the viewer to seek anecdotal asylum For in Culpepper’s work one encounters ed by the manipulative mediations of subject in the lazy illusion of an actual garden. something beyond the boundaries of what matter. Very much in the moment but For even when the title of the work holds we normally experience in the presence of nowhere in particular, one does not feel the out a tantalizing pastoral promise, such is most paintings––which is to say, the rigor that Culpepper she seems to obliterate the usual demands of herself––and of distance that exists between the us––that she must continually art object and the viewer in the subvert romantic expectations on act of looking. the part of the viewer in order to One does not really “look” awaken him or her to the larger at Culpepper’s paintings in the reality of the painting itself, in the normal sense, anyway. One gets actual moment that they caught up in their swirling encounter it. At the same time, skeins of color as though in a the openings (or other formal vortex or a storm. It could be interruptions) in the painterly argued, of course, that this is a vortexes that Culpepper whips up common enough sensation in so exuberantly often serve as the regard to the kind of generally still centers of her compositions large-scale painting that came and distinguish her style signifi- about with the advent of cantly from the overall composi- Abstract Expressionism, particu- tions of her predecessor Jackson larly the species of it known as Pollock, to whom she is often “action painting,” of which likened for the sumptuous kinetic Culpepper could be termed one energy of her style. One sees this of our most consistent and pro- to particular advantage once ficient practitioners. In the exe- again in the major painting that cution of this type of painting, Culpepper calls “I am the after all, the artist brings the full Universe.” force of his or her body, the full The title is provocative not motion of the arm, rather than only because it unabashedly just of the wrist, to bear, and asserts the godlike powers that the size of the painting in rela- every ambitious artist must feel in tion to the proportions of the the process of creation, but also viewer’s body automatically for the astral majesty of the com- makes for a kind of empathetic position, in which, once again, a physical relationship. But while kind of central porthole in a wel- this is a valid enough explana- ter of layered red and deep yellow tion of the way scale affects how skeins opens onto a vibrant blue one relates viscerally to a paint- “I Am The Universe” cosmos sprinkled with starry ing, it still doesn’t account for white dots. Here, too, Culpepper the impact that Culpepper achieves even in need to read any meaning beyond what is thwarts allusiveness before it drifts into illu- smaller paintings such as “Agitate 1” and immediately before one, even in the case of sion, drawing the viewer back with the Agitate 2,” each only a square foot in diam- paintings such as the aforementioned “A aggressive vigor of her gestural swirls and eter. Garden of Green,” in which the verdant drips from the ethereal cosmic dream to the Even though the colors in these two hues that dominate the entire composition palpable physicality of the paint surface compositions are less bucolic than those in, nonetheless could quite naturally provoke a itself, as if to say, “Behold another universe say, “A Garden of Green” (a larger painting mood of pastoral reverie. One enters this to get lost in!” we will get to a bit further on), the effect of painting as though through a thicket For in these works, as well as in other their energetic layering of red, yellow, black, formed by the dense layerings of green yel- major compositions such as “Energy” and and white linear swirls of splashed and low, white, and blue hues interwoven, in the “Energy 2,” where rhythm, movement, and dripped pigment on a pale blue ground manner of an intricate bird’s nest, all around color alone are sufficient to trump illusion, evokes a sense of vitality similar to the play the edges of the composition. Through the Dorothy A. Culpepper demonstrates the of sunlight on the treetops that I can see nearly impenetrable fabric of overlapping power of pure painting to provide its own from my window right now as I write, dripped and splashed strokes that spread rich rewards. which are also much reduced in size by their almost to the center of the composition, distance from me. All of which is to make traces of the ground color can be seen like ––Byron Coleman the point that the impact of Culpepper’s glimpses of clear blue sky showing through

6 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Post-Feminist Phallic Provocateur Sylvia Hennequin Lets it All Hang Out at Monkdogz Urban Art he juncture at which painting and pho- In “Snaked Risen Creature” another major However, she does so more artfully by Ttography meet–– or in some cases, col- work from the series, which is in the exhibi- combining autophotography with a painter- lide––would appear to be one of the more tion, the artist presents herself with a reptil- ly power and panache akin to that of Karel fertile art avenues in an era dominated by ian head and every part of her naked body, Appel and other artists of the Cobra Group, mixed media. And one of its most intrepid except her breasts, covered with colorful the vigorous, animistic, neo-primitivist explorers is the Netherlands artist answer of her native Netherlands to Sylvia Hennequin, who takes the Abstract Expressionism. Dragging hybrid form a giant step further by the zeitgeist of that exclusively male using herself as a model for state- European movement kicking and ments that far surpass the autopho- screaming into the postmodern age tography of better known postmod- and endowing it with an elevated ernists, such as Cindy Sherman, for postfeminist consciousness, their sheer shock value. Hennequin stakes her claim on a In “Deity Eve,” Hennequin pres- new neofeminist mythology of ents herself as a kind of Lady empowerment, transforming her Libertine, wearing a crown of cocks. own photographed and painted From under her tiara of phalli–– image into symbols as potently some fully erect, others somewhat provocative as Richard Lindner’s aflop––the artist greets her public emblematic S&M Amazons of the with a frank, full frontal gaze, as she 1960s. clutches her bare breasts so forceful- Hennequin’s process, which ly that her chest is torn asunder, involves photographing herself in revealing her naked heart. That color, then converting the image to heart, one suspects, may have been black and white with Photoshop, many times broken. But “Eve’s” transferring it to canvas, and adding expression (more of a smirk than a not only paint but a variety of col- Mona Lisa smile) as she flaunts her lage elements, sometimes including trophies like Medusa’s mane of ser- embroidery, results in a layered com- pents, suggests that revenge is, at plexity. While the aesthetic element very least, bittersweet. of her pieces can sometimes be In a past series, one of upstaged by her showy imagery of Hennequin’s most mind-boggling her larger, more sexually explicit productions was a work called pieces (which might seem akin to “Dickhead,” playing off of a com- the performance artist Karen Finley mon street epithet, in which a smearing peanut butter all over her plethora of various-sized peckers naked body, if not for her painterly made up a monumental head in the panache), the baroque beauty of manner of the 14th century Hennequin’s style comes to the Milanese painter Giuseppe forefront in smaller portrait heads Arcimboldo’s protosurrealist human such as “Jester.” “Under the Spell of portraits composed of fruits, vegeta- Maenad.” The latter work, in which bles, and flowers. In keeping with the artist transforms herself into one her stated goal of “balancing male of the vine-crowned female worship- and female energies,” Hennequin pers of Dionysus from Greek also created a vaginal counterpoint mythology, is especially striking in this regard, the photo imagery rich- to “Dickhead” called “Mmm...” “Diety Eve” –– a veritable gynecologist’s flower ly embellished with an intricate array garden of labia majora, labia minora, and scales and swirls. of drawn and collaged imagery and bathed clitoral imagery, which served equally well In both works, Hennequin presents a in vibrant colors. That the Maenads, which to draw attention to her boldly sexualized new vision of The Goddess for the post- literally translates as “raving ones,” were vision of humanity. feminist era. Indeed, she outdoes such for- notorious for their copious sexual activity, In her new exhibition “Darwinian midable feminist predecessors as the late violence, bloodletting, self-intoxication and Dreams” at Monkdogz Urban Art, 547 Hannah Wilke and Eleanor Antin, who also mutilation makes this an especially resonant West 27th Street, from November 13 used their own naked bodies as a medium theme. And that Orpheus, the legendary through December 13, Hennequin features for making art. Perhaps the only earlier poet and lyre player, was ultimately torn to a series called “Eve’s Legacy.” Her goal in woman artist who approached Hennequin’s pieces by Maenads adds an element of anti- these works is to create embodiments of level of provocativeness was Linda Benglis art sentiment to the subject. But here, as in what she refers to as “authentic female who once took an ad in Artforum in which all of her work, Sylvia Hennequin’s aesthetic power.” One of the signature works in the she appeared nude, sporting an enormous sensibility wins out, rendering even the most series is “Silver Wolf,” in which a large latex dildo. Just as aggressively, Hennequin anarchic imagery consummately artful. howling canine head is grafted onto the defies the culturally designated passivity of photographic image of a voluptuous nude acceptable feminine sexuality (which she ––Ed McCormack artist with a holstered six-gun strapped to parodied poignantly in an earlier series of on her thigh like a punk rock Calamity Jane. docile nudes with bunny heads).

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 Shigeru Mizuki, Japan’s Grandfather of Manga and Real Life Ghostbuster, Makes His American Gallery Debut at Monkdogz Urban Art

uch of what is considered new and always loved comic strips and comic too has known a time when there was no Mvital in contemporary Japanese books, I doubt that I would’ve been able electricity, gas, or petroleum, and yet as far art––the “Cute” movement, “Superflat,” to comprehend the enormous impact as I know the West has never been dis- and all that–– might never have come manga and anime have had in Japan with- posed to delight in shadows. Japanese about if not for a man named Shigeru out having read “In Praise of Shadows,” a ghosts have traditionally had no feet; Mizuki, now in his eighties, who is widely book length essay by the great Japanese Western ghosts have feet, but are trans- revered in Japan, as “the grandfather of novelist Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). parent. As even this trifle suggests, pitch manga.” Without his influence, the car- This beautifully written book is sup- darkness has always occupied our fantasies, toon imagery that permeates Japanese popular culture might not have become an international phe- nomenon, and it is highly doubtful that artists such as Takashi Murakami, touted in his recent blockbuster exhi- bition at the Brooklyn Museum as the “Japanese Andy Warhol,” would have risen to such promi- nence. It stands to rea- son, then, that camera crews from the leading Japanese TV sta- tions were dis- patched to New York City recently, when it was announced that Shigeru Mizuki would be having his first American gallery exhibition (which continues through November 8) at Monkdogz posed to be about Japanese aesthetics and while in the West even ghosts are as clear Urban Art, 547 West 27th Street, in the Japanese character, but from a as glass.” Chelsea, and that the gallery would be the Westerner’s point of view it makes a great Tanizaki extols the pleasures of sitting worldwide representative for his series of case for hari kari. For in it, Tanizaki, who at night in “an old, dimly lit” traditional original woodblock prints based on admired “decadent” Western writers like outhouse “basking in the faint glow Hiroshige’s “53 stations of the Yokaido Baudelaire, Poe, and Wilde, argues with reflected from the shoji,” and adds, “The Road.” (Since Mizuki recasts the master’s eloquent perversity for all that is dark and parlor may have its charms but the scenes with his own cartoon characters, he gloomy in his culture. Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual adds “Featuring GeGeGe no Kitaro” to “Why should this propensity to seek repose.” He rhapsodizes about the way the title.) beauty in darkness be so strong only in the florid patterns of lacquered tableware Although I grew up with and have Orientals?” he asks rhetorically. “The West “recede into the darkness, conjuring in

8 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery.” He waxes so popular in Japan–– where they are featured not only on t- nostalgic for the “ghostly beauty” of the women of his childhood shirts, backpacks, and other kid stuff, but on corporate logos, in the 1890s who “still blackened their teeth” and spent most of adult consumer products, and just about everywhere else–– their lives “in the twilight of a single house...shrouded day and because they offer psychological relief from the often dehumaniz- night in gloom.” ing pace of a workaholic society. If Junichiro Tanizaki embraced shadows, Shigeru Mizuki has In any case, Mizuki goes on to explain the genesis of the always sought to banish them and let some light into Japanese works on view at Monkdogz Urban Art as follows: “It took me culture with his humorous cartoons centering on Yokai, ghostly two years to draw ‘Fifty-three stations of the Yokaido Road,’ beings from traditional Japanese folklore. doing my version of Hiroshige’s....For people of the period it was Not that women were still blackening their teeth or hiding in not easy to go on journeys, so they appreciated and amused the shadows in 1959, when Mizuki first started publishing his themselves with the landscapes Hiroshige painted. I have no cartoons in magazines for boys. But Mizuki, a southpaw who lost doubt they would have loved it had they found Yokai among the his left arm in an explosion after being drafted into the Imperial landscapes and people in the pictures.” Japanese Army in 1942, and had to learn to write and draw with The eight pictures from the series so far completed from the right one, had his own darkness to deal with at war’s end. In Mizuki’s drawings as woodcuts by master craftsmen using tech- occupied Japan, where his older brother had been convicted of niques dating back to Hiroshige’s time, are just as much fun war crimes and executed, he had to today, with all manner of Yokai appear- work for years as a movie theater opera- ing along the way like Halloween gob- tor before publishing his first manga (a lins to terrify the travelers. term originally coined by the sixteenth What’s most remarkable about the century woodblock master Hokusai for series is how Mizuki has managed to his more lighthearted narrative draw- make his supernatural cartoon charac- ings). ters—a giant blue skeleton with red eye- “Once upon a time—though it was balls popping out of its sockets and a only seventy or eighty years ago––Japan huge many-legged insect chasing a hys- had a lot of darkness, where many Yokai terical sojourner down a narrow inlet; a used to live,” Mizuki has written, claim- humanoid demon looming like King ing that these ghosts may have been Kong over snow-capped mountain peaks chased away by all the “fluorescent above unsuspecting bathers in the lights, street lamps and neon lights glar- stream below; a waitress in a kimono at ing everywhere.” a roadside food-stall with a long serpen- “Even in your house, you could sense the presence of Yokai in tine neck reminiscent of the American comic book character the bathroom, the lavatory and closet,” he elaborated. “Some of Plastic Man; a giant eyeball with arms and legs; a walking torso them might have been hiding there since the Edo period.” shaped like an ancestor of Sponge Bob Square Pants, and all As his drawings make clear, Mizuki sees these spirits, which manner of other outlandish apparitions––blend harmoniously represent different human traits in ancient moral tales, as essen- with Hiroshige’s meticulously detailed landscapes. Indeed, the tially benign. And apparently multitudes of Japanese feel similarly, grandfather of modern manga proves himself to be every bit as since his cartoon figures of them have been ubiquitous for almost exacting a draftsman as the Edo period woodblock master whose half a century, first in comic books and later in television pro- works he re-imagines in a hallucinatory style somewhere between grams, video games, and animated films. Actors have portrayed Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali. his characters in live action films; they even decorate the face of These prints were seen only twice before in the United States, commuter trains, and there are entire museums dedicated to at the Japan Information and Cultural Center at the Japanese them in Japan. Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Kinokuniya Bookstore in “People nowadays are working so hard, always so grim and New York City. Thus Shigeru Mizuki’s first exhibition at an desperate, while Edo people seemed to know how to enjoy life,” American commercial gallery constitutes an important art world Mizuki says. “And they owed it to the Yokai, who used to exist event, since it will introduce a more aesthetically sophisticated around them.” audience to this manga master who, while choosing to work in a It is interesting to consider this last statement in relation to popular media, has had an enormous influence on countless the opinion of some sociologists that cute cartoon characters are younger Japanese artists. ––Ed McCormack

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 Group Show Offers “Emotional Guidance” for Artists and Viewers Alike on’t tell Oprah, but art can be a tool her personal guidance system to stand out in Dfor self-help! At least this intriguing all capital letters on the page)? Working in a notion, having nothing to do with what is variety of mediums including collage, pas- normally known as “art therapy,” provides a tels, plexiglass, oils and mixed techniques characteristically provocative premise for the BILLI, evokes the world of dreams with Italian curator Stefania Carrozzini’s exhibi- images such as the free-floating face of a tion “The Emotional Guidance System man containing an entire constellation of (from fear to joy),” at Broadway Gallery, colorful forms. On one level, this work 473 Broadway, from November 16 through could suggest a tormented soul ravaged by 30, with a reception on Thursday the livid lesions of a deadly disease; on November 20, from 6 to 8pm. another more positive level, this might be The joy that the exhibition (presented the symbolically glittering visage of a cosmic Left: Annamaria Cimbal, under the auspices of I am International Art dreamer. (Perhaps the message here is that Right: Stefania Carrozzino Media with the patronage of D’Ars we each create our own reality.) Foundation Oscar Signorini Onlus) appar- By contrast there is nothing ambiguous Expressionism and Color Field painting ently centers on is that of aesthetic delecta- about Annamaria Cimbal’s post-Pop paint- converge in a shimmering synthesis. One tion as a means of awakening the intellect, ing of an effervescent Marilyn Monroe in a can surmise as well that Pisani’s exuberant the senses, and most important the feelings, lowcut top poised against a grid of brilliantly abstract style is informed as well by her to ward off the emotional numbness that an colorful sports cars. The image is at once intense study of Asian religions, since for all overstimulated cultural and anticultural ironic and oddly uplifting, a celebration of their showy visual fireworks and fashionable (read: Sarah Palin) environment produces the sexy, life-loving star as objet de Camp, flair, her paintings appear paradoxically both here and abroad. What makes this rad- rather than the tragic woman behind the introspective. ical in the contemporary context is that, if mask. Cimbal’s Marilyn is as positive in its Then there is Miriam De Berardis, whose one understands her correctly, Carrozzini is own way as Andy Warhol’s dayglo grids of poured liquid colors descend in gorgeous advocating a return to passion and engage- Marilyns. Wasn’t it Andy who, called him- rivulets from the top of the composition, ment in an art world where irony rules and self, and by extension his work, “deeply making a good case for her inclusion in an feeling anything at all can be not only taboo superficial?” Of course, we all know that he exhibition geared to elevating the emotions but patently uncool. and it were anything but. And anyone who by virtue of their sheer chromatic efferves- As always with contemporary art, often knew him, as I did, can tell you that Andy’s cence. Here, the main hue is a vibrant red one must take the artist’s intentions as they facetiousness was the ultimate defense that saturates the canvas completely on the relate to content on faith; yet the theme mechanism. Self-help or self-negation? left side, forming a hot field that tapers off provides a thoughtful context for viewing Sometimes, Cimbal may be telling us, it’s a toward the middle, interrupted by bits of the works included from a particular angle very thin line. bare white priming and irregular stripes in or perspective. Ordinary industrial building materials are equally electric blue and violet hues. Filippo Barbieri, for starters, works with magically transformed into high art in the Once again, with this exhibition Stefania craggy abstract forms and earthy, raw-look- constructions of Stefano Saba. In this exhi- Carrozzini demonstrates her singular ability ing deep red and brown hues reminiscent of bition, Saba presents us with what appears to curate from the perspective of a practic- the American painter Clyfford Still. to be a wall of “blind” windows, suspended ing artist (which she is, along with being However, rather than using oils or other from strings, as though a more whimsical one of Italy’s most astute critics and journal- standard art materials, Barbieri “paints” with ancestor of Mondrian went hog wild in ists). This invariably makes her own sensibil- iron and other metals, creating an even Home Depot. The idea is fanciful, yet the ity an overriding phantom presence in more rugged effect than the older artist. total effect is strangely formal, with its geo- every show that she presents. On second And yet his work is possessed of great ele- metric forms and hard edged color scheme thought, perhaps not so phantom, since as I gance, bridging the gap between painting of red, white, and black. have mentioned before, she usually creates and sculpture with its powerful material Antonella Laganá, on the other hand, is a her own catalog covers and her essays for presence while technically being neither. As painter’s painter as well as a poet, as seen in each show, whether it be in her own coun- much as any artist working in so called her exuberant abstract acrylic on canvas in try, the U.S., or Beijing (where she is one of “new media” today he seems to be making which freely brushed pastel hues suggest the first foreign curators to make intimate the point that categories are for escaping, fireworks or Jack Kerouac’s proverbial contacts among the vital community of just as every good artists knows that rules “crazy Roman candles” exploding across a young artists who are making that city one are for breaking. nocturnal sky. Lagana brings her studies of of the emerging hot spots of the interna- By contrast, Clara Scarampella embraces fresco and glass fusing to bear in her acrylic tional art world), which are imaginative for- what Italians term “effimero,” by virtue of paintings, judging from her the luminous ays as well as thematic guides. Indeed, as evoking ephemeral essences with the most crystalline quality of her colors. this exhibition demonstrates, most often transitory matter. Here, delicate yellow arti- Indeed, all good painters bring the full these essays provide a context for free associ- ficial butterflies are partially submerged in complexity of their personalities to bear in ation and imaginative interpretation around sand, like footsteps soon to disappear. their work, and Milan-born Silvia Pisani, the theme by the participating artists, rather Perhaps the artist is telling us not to fear the who has worked as a fashion designer but is than strict adherence to it. And what artist, temporal nature of our lives, for only our also a student of physics and vibrational one can only wonder, could possibly ask for impermanence is what makes everything medicine, obviously has a great many a more inspiring emotional guidance system precious and poignant. diverse interests. Their confluence can be than that? But what of Daniela Billi, a painter and felt in the showers of subtle overall color poet born in Arbon, Switzerland, who signs that fill Pisani’s mixed media composition ––Ed McCormack her work BILLI (perhaps because it pleases “Onde di Vita,” in which aspects of Abstract

10 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Jean-Marc Calvet and Batís Campillo Run the Gamut From the Frenetic to the Sublime t is not often that a press release and private collections, has to be one Iverges on literature, but the open- of the mellowest minimalists around. ing two lines of a recent one came Indeed, the transcendent quality in close: “I once heard a man say that her work may owe something to the he tries not to spend too much time fact that she is a licensed pilot and contemplating himself or the world at actually takes to the sky for inspira- large. He claimed that the inside of tion. However, in order to see the his head was like wandering around a earth as a perfect circle, the shape of her recent works, all of which are tondos, some on the wall, others as small, freestanding sculptures in transparent plexiglass supports, Batís would have to travel to outer space. So perhaps some of Campillo’s tondos—the ones in deep burnished reds—represent the burning orb of the sun at an altitude 10,000 plus feet. More likely, their shape is simply symbolic in the manner of the eternal circles drawn by Zen masters. Perhaps this is why Batis’ tondos seem to speak of time as well as space. Either way, with their subtly tex- Photo of Jean-Marc Calvert by Ella Manor tured monochromatic surfaces con- mates, the gifted young photographer taining exquisitely graceful striations Ella Manor, with the swarming that could suggest wispy tendrils of images from one of his paintings eat- clouds, her serene creations complete ing away his bare flesh and impinging the circle that unites the formal with on his tattoos, and you should get the spiritual. some idea of what inspired the writer Batís Campillo of the press release to scale heights —Ed McCormack rarely reached by any besides the likes of Raymond Chandler. There’s a whole legend about how Calvet got that lived-in mug which I won’t go into here (see the movie). All I’m going to say is that if you missed his exhibition, you missed something. Calvet’s paintings could ASCA give a teetotaler the DT’s, someone Founded 1917 who never dropped LSD acid flash- backs, your psychotherapist the hee- american society of bie jeebies. I’m not going to describe them for you once again, if you contemporary artists haven’t read my previous reviews of Calvet, because right now I don’t feel like trying to top my toughest com- NOV 4 - 16 2008 petitor, myself. Just look at some of those swarming images in Ella celebrating its Manor’s portrait of the artist, imag- 90th ine them blown up in livid living annual exhibition color on large canvases, and promise yourself not to miss Jean-Marc Calvet’s next solo show. Jean-Marc Calvert “ASCA’S GREAT IN 2008” Some of us who were fortunate at bad neighborhood late at night.” enough to see the show this year This gem came from Monkdogz thought it prudent of Marina Hadley Urban Art, 547 West 27th Street, and Bob Hogge, the dynamic duo Broome Street Gallery touting a recent exhibition by Jean- behind Monkdogz, to schedule “Sky,” 498 Broome Street Marc Calvet, who is also the subject an exhibition by Batís Campillo as an New York City of an upcoming documentary by the immediate follow-up. INFORMATION: 212-759-2215 French filmmaker Dominic Allan. Campillo, who has exhibited Take a look at the portrait of Calvet throughout Spain and Europe, where on this page, by one of his gallery her work is in numerous museums

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 From Realism to Abstraction and Back: Staten Island Artists Bring Diverse Visions to New Century in Chelsea taten Island is making serious inroads vast landscape ripe for exploration. Or at least tenement building show different reactions Sinto the New York City art scene, judg- that’s the feeling one gets from his Conte to some unseen event occurring on the ing from “Visualized,” a group exhibition pencil drawings on large sheets of gesso- street below. Then there is the sharply featuring artists from that bucolic borough, primed paper, with their boldly delineated observed “Feast of Saint Anthony,” in seen recently at New Century Artists, Inc., breasts, bellies, and buttocks that also func- which a cardinal and priests sporting sly 530 West 25th Street, in Chelsea. Some of tion as strong abstract forms which he often smiles on a street in Little Italy during the the same artists exhibited in the same venue invests with dynamism by depicting them annual street festival suggest figures from a a year ago and each shows an ongoing stylis- from unusual angles. The dynamic cropping satirical etching by Goya or a caricature by tic evolution and consistency of vision. of Ekelund’s figures might remind one of Daumier. One was struck once again, for example, Philip Pearlstein, except that they are much In her mixed media paintings in water- by the combination of intimacy and complex- less clinical and more sensual, given the warm color and collage, as well as in her etchings, ity in the small, intricate ink drawings of red tones he achieves with Conte pencil. Liv Pandolfino couches her concern with Lenny Khimishman. Although unassuming in Indeed, Ekelund’s use of this drawing medi- ecology in a visionary style. In her scale, Khimishman’s graphic explorations um enables him to achieve an impressive “Environmental Echo” etchings, images of evoke an emotional response by virtue of his sense of scale that one is more normally crows on bare tree limbs in a ruined land- ability to capture states of mind and memory. accustomed to seeing in painting, as well as a scape and dead birds, crabs, and fish skele- Faces and figures are interwoven symbolically full-bodied sculptural monumentality. tons on a rocky beach give new meaning to in a timeless space where interiors and exteri- Ken Martin’s inkjet prints from digital- the term “nature morte,” while her collage ors flow into each other as freely as in a ized slides have a personal component, since painting “Earth is Our Mother” takes a turn dream. The weathered, bearded visage of a he once worked in one of the now aban- for the fanciful with a goddess-like figure ris- man of mature years becomes a map of regret doned industrial buildings that he photo- ing out of a sweeping mountainous vista. As in more than one work, either haunted by a graphs so affectingly. There’s a truly elegiac, indicated by the latter work Pandolfino is an large female face or taunted by a female almost spooky quality to his images of intrepid artist, unafraid to push her imagery nude, suggesting romantic possibilities that empty factories in upstate towns such as to the limits in order to make a point, as slipped away in some distant past, as in the Buffalo and Stillwater, New York, that is seen in another mixed media painting called piece titled “Old Pain.” Figures and winding especially poignant in “Abandoned Paper “One With the Universe,” in which show- staircases and windows and clock faces and a Mill,” with its crumbling facade and black ers of stars and planetary orbs lighting up host of other objects form a maze of intrigu- windows like eye-sockets in a human skull. the cosmos are juxtaposed with ethereal fig- ing symbols meaningfully meshed by the fine The sense of desolation is enhanced by the urative forms. lines of this gifted draftsman. vast areas of brilliant blue sky against which Fritz (Steven) Weiss, on the other hand, Tom J. Hagen showed a series of subur- these massive, desolate structures are often discovers the abstract possibilities of every- ban snow scenes in oil on canvas with con- set like contemporary ruins. Martin makes day subjects in his boldly emblematic digital siderable atmospheric appeal. Although the human presence felt by its absence. photography. In one series of works the working in a traditional realist style, Hagen By contrast, George Roos’s digital prints ornate gingerbread facades of houses in imposes a singular sensibility on his compo- fairly swarm with humanity. Pictures such as Cape May are bitmaked and emblazoned sitions, due to his special sensitivity to his “West Side Story” evoke not so much with pastel hues to create a dazzlingly chiaroscuro in paintings such as “Afternoon the musical play of that name but stills from baroque Neo-Impressionist effect. In anoth- Shadows,” with its snow covered logs and vintage black and white movies such as er, crowds of tourists in street markets are tree branches beyond conjured in bravura “Street Scene” and “Sidewalks of New electrified in a manner suggesting the intri- brush strokes. One of Hagen’s smallest yet York,” with neighborhood people congre- cate, intimate early semi-abstractions of most evocative canvases, “Coming Storm,” gating on stoops, conversing and drinking Mark Tobey. Weiss is an innovative formal- shows a virtuoso use of gray tonalities in its beer, as children play nearby. Roos obviously ist, employing the new technology to create evocation of an overcast sky hovering above chooses to work in black and white in order compositions that look at the known world an old Victorian house. Only a small, warm to invest his pictures with a romantic sense from a new perspective, albeit always with a glimmer of light cuts through the surround- of nostalgia that enhances the effect of distancing effect that makes the nonobjec- ing gloom, suggesting a homey coziness images such as “Four Windows/Five Lives,” tive features of his diverse subject matter the within. in which the various positions and expres- most salient element in his inventive visual For Richard Ekelund, the human body is a sions of people in different windows of a explorations. ––Byron Coleman

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12 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 The Digital Art of James Eugene Albert is Built to Last

ne has only to “scan” (as we tend to more purely “painterly” than anything he looking for inspiration to both European Odo in what one writer for this publica- has done in the past. It takes a rare kind of surrealism and Native American sources. tion calls “the post-literate era,” rather than integrity for a digital artist to forego the The hybrid imagery that they developed perusing or reading at a leisurely pace) texts facile effects so endemic to the technology also showed a kindred spirit with the fanciful such as “Iterations: The New Image,” to the degree that Albert does here, without floating shapes in the abstractions of Joan Timothy Druckrey’s book on digital imag- fear of disappointing the expectations of Miro and the gouache paintings that ing, to gather that with very few exceptions Alexander Calder often made in (all too many of those naively “psychedel- preparation for his mobiles. ic”) most digital art exhibited in gallery and Like those artists, albeit from a more museum surveys today bases its aesthetic on contemporary perspective, Albert photo imagery transmitted in the mass achieves in these new pictures the kind media. of formal simplicity and freedom of Rather than endeavoring to create objects which Picasso is said to have remarked, of aesthetic delectation which stand on their “It takes a lifetime for an artist to learn own merits, the aim of overwhelming num- to paint like a child.” In “Wall Series bers of artists who work on computers A,” for example, thick red serpentine appears to be to replicate the effects of squiggles interact in an animated dance advertising campaigns, music videos, and with rows of dark dots and vertical other aspects of popular culture that show violet strokes set against a gray ground, few traces of the human hand or subjective the iconography seeming close in vision. spirit, if not in intent, to Australian For this reason, among others, it is edify- Aboriginal “Dreamtime” paintings. In ing to encounter the work of an artist such “Wall Series B,” an even sparer compo- as James Eugene Albert, who is based in sition, the main elements are two sinu- San Francisco and whose new digital prints ous linear forms laid in thick strokes of can be seen at World Fine Art Gallery, 511 gray culminating in circular shapes that West 25th Street, from November 4 suggest primitive symbols for eyes, jux- through 29. (Reception: November 13, taposed with red and ocher dots and 6 to 8pm.) rhythmically rippling lines. Here, again, “I do, occasionally, have ‘pseudo-realism’ we see how Albert pays homage to type moments, but thankfully, they go away indigenous cultures from the perspec- quickly,” says Albert. “I’m a fantasy tive of an artist thoroughly schooled in painter.” European aesthetics. His use of the term “painter” seems While both of the above composi- telling for Albert is that rare thing: a digital tions emphasize the two-dimensionality artist who is less enamored of all the instant of the picture plane in the classic mod- special effects at his fingertips than of values, ernist manner, “Wall Series D” and virtues, and verities that have always count- “Wall Series C” branches out into the ed first and foremost among artists working more playful postmodernist precincts of in more traditional mediums down through so-called “abstract illusionism.” Here, the ages. Albert introduces virtual textures and None of which is to say that Albert is a cast shadows playing about the edges technophobe or a Luddite. For he obviously of the forms, employing the special relishes his mastery of the computer and has capabilities of digital art sparingly to demonstrate how they can be success- proven his facility with the instrument again “Wall Series C” and again, creating imagery ranging from fully integrated into the composition to faces and masks inspired by African and those who think that the whole point of broaden the scope of traditional modernist North American cultures, to imaginary ani- such art is to create entertaining illusions, to practice. However, he does so with mals as stand-ins for the human soul, to turn technical tricks, so to speak. But obvi- admirable restraint, enabling the viewer to fantastic landscape vistas of outer and inner ously Albert is willing to take that risk in focus primarily on the formal unity of the space, to vibrant abstract compositions order to demonstrate to more sophisticated composition, which is especially impressive which compel one’s admiration for their col- viewers who are not quite so much in awe in “Wall Series C,” where the evocative cen- orisitic and formal attributes alone. of the new technology that the computer, in tral shape suggests a fantastic Art Brut figure Anyone who has followed his exhibitions the hands of one in possession of a refined yet retains a strikingly abstract autonomy. at World Fine Art Gallery, where he has sensibility, can indeed be a legitimate fine art James Eugene Albert’s considerable been showing regularly for several years, is medium. accomplishment is to embody in his work by now well aware of Albert’s virtuosity as Albert makes this point splendidly in the the true potential of digital technology as a well as his versatility. That he “sketches” works he calls “Wall Series,” where he medium for making art that can endure, most of his imagery with a low resolution employs severely simplified, brilliantly color- rather than something fated to fade away, digital camera, which he prefers to so-called ful pictographic forms akin to those in the like so many other aspects of our disposable state of the art equipment for the creative early paintings of Adolph Gottlieb. These culture, once its novelty value has been leeway it allows him, makes his achievement works hark back to that vital period of thoroughly exhausted. What he finally all the more remarkable. American art in the 1940s, immediately pre- demonstrates most clearly is that any medi- The success of his method is especially ceding the advent of Abstract um can be enduring in the hands of a true evident in his recent abstract compositions, Expressionism, when some of our most vital artist. which appear (to this reviewer anyway) nonobjective painters were simultaneously ––Maurice Taplinger

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 The Immaterial Meets the Palpable in “The “Portable Show” ecause asking probing questions is hard- covered with scrambled, indecipherable ous examples of multimedia and interdisci- Bly the foundation on which most con- typewriting. Although such “concrete poet- plinary experimentation by reasserting the temporary American curators build an exhi- ry” is tailor-made for digital transmission primacy of traditional art materials in a man- bition, the philosophical approach of the Diotallevi’s choice of serigraphy as a medi- ner that brings the entire weight of art his- adventurous Italian curator Stefania um seems a statement of faith in older tory to bear as a barricade against the assault Carrozzini, who recently launched her own graphic traditions. on the material substance of art. Of course vehicle I AM International Art Media, to In the case of Anna Ghisleni there is no this is probably not what is on their minds organize shows in Milan, New York City, question of her commitment to the art of when they go into their studio to work and Beijing, is invariably refreshing. painting, given the great, rugged vigor of every day, but it must be considered in Since she is a writer as well as a curator, her abstract composition in oil on canvas, regard to their inclusion in the context of a Carrozzini’s projects are usually introduced “Nevicata in bianco e nero,” with its intense show such as this one. by one of her thoughtful catalog essays, welter of strokes in thick, mostly monochro- Annalisa Picchioni, who graduated from which present the concept behind the show matic impasto creating a surging energy the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2004, in her characteristically poetic prose. For field that seems to celebrate the palpable studied the incision techniques of the inno- “The Portable Show, ” from December 1 qualities of piled-on pigment. vative British printmaker Stanley Hayter, through 15 at Broadway Gallery, 473 Through their which involve draw- Broadway, Carrozzini contributes a text collaborations, the ing directly on the called “Art Travels In Time and the Space painter Lidia etching plate. She of Creation,” which, evoking the spirit of Gobbati and the applies a similarly Walter Benjamin, asserts that “Digital art computer and spontaneous process has upset the traditional aura of the work of video artist Ivano in her oil, “Flash,” art and its physical immanence” and asks, Bortolussi, co- with its slashing diag- “Why do artists continue to covet the tangi- founders of the onal lines scored into ble object, matter, why do they insist on artists group the thick paint sur- working on canvases, on marble, on paper, LiveArt, suggest face and a combina- on the environment: why not all take refuge that a detente may tion of roughly rec- in the virtual, why not give themselves be possible between tangular and looser wholeheartedly to the cause of the immate- old and new art gestural forms that rial?” mediums. Gobbati recall the “push and The challenge is answered by Natalia paints symbolic and pull” of the Abstract Berselli, one of several Italian artists featured biomorphic forms Expressionist painter in the show, with a large oil on canvas called in mixed media on and teacher Hans “Composition of Vases,” in which a tradi- canvas, and Hofmann. At the tional still life subject in muted grays and Bortolussi elabo- same time, the title of earth colors reminiscent of the Cubist rates and animates the work, Pichioni’s palette morphs into a supple linear composi- them for video in Silva Nironi brilliant colors, and tion of wavering planes akin to the abstrac- three dimensions on the computer in the the sense of velocity in her brushstrokes tions of Brice Marden and the more halluci- manner of a jazz musician riffing on an may allude to the kinetic activity and flash- natory qualities of Arte Metafisica. existing melody. The duo’s interactive ing lights on a computer screen. The insistent physicality of a mixed media explorations bring about an intriguing syn- The physicality of the artwork is made assemblage on canvas by Adriana Collovati thesis of the physical and the virtual, where- palpable in another manner in Paoa Scialpi’s also scoffs at virtual reality. Collovati, who in a baroque abstract form from a painting mixed media work in acrylic on board, “The studied ceramics before taking up painting, by Gobbati is echoed in a mysterious shape Path of Ideas,” in which the back’s of two presents us with a small, precise Neo- suspended between transposed areas of brightly painted envelopes suggest A-frame Futurist canvas mounted on a thickly tex- water and sky by Bortolussi. houses and the front of the third opens to tured white panel, answering the question Silva Nironi weds the virtual to the physi- reveal a mysterious abstract document with its aggressive tactility. By contrast, cal in yet another way in her digital photo springing out like a jack-in-the-box. The Alessandra Cocchi proves that the most imagery on aluminum. Inspired by the implication here is that certain types of fragile of materials can take on a palpable urban landscape, which she sees as “both magic can only be made the old way: by physicality under the weight of the simplest evocation and reference, metaphor of the hand. symbols, in her exquisitely spare white-on- contemporary spirit between layers of mean- Then there is Karl Stengel, an artist in his white work in embossed paper, “La casa dei ing and reading.” Although Nironi’s com- eighties born in Ungheria, educated in ritorni,” which has the ethereal swiftness of positions, in which angular abstract architec- Budapest, whose deceptively primitive oil a Zen painting executed in invisible ink. tural compositions and which fragments of pastel drawing of a silhouetted figure, Marcello Diotallevi, a former restorer at typography suggesting block letters in neon “Evening Walking,” has a rudimentary, the Vatican, started his art career as painter, signs overlap in glowing auras of colored childlike rawness that recalls Picasso’s now creating his own art in diverse media light that can only be achieved digitally and famous statement, “It tales a lifetime to such as mail art, visual poetry, graphics and she professes strong affinities with cinema, learn to draw like a child.” Here, again, is installation, is represented by a serigraph television and multimedia, her work also convincing evidence that, as Stefania entitled “Letter from Citera.” It is com- reveals an abiding spiritual kinship with the Carrozzini puts it so poetically in her essay, prised of a black and white high contrast collages of Kurt Schwitters and the oils of the destiny of art––be material or virtual–– photo image of a woman’s face partially Stuart Davis. Vital connections are forged in may be “to nourish with symbols the body obscured by a mask that could suggest her work between such early modernists and of the imaginary.” either a Mideastern veil sans headscarf or the an adamantly postmodern sensibility. disguise of a bank robber—take your The final three artists present a possibly ––Ed McCormack pick––with the exposed portion of her face problematical counterbalance to the previ-

14 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 The American Society of Contemporary Artists Celebrates its 90th Anniversary at Broome Street Gallery ince its founding in 1917, the mem- has been widely celebrated in China and Sbership of the American Society of Japan for her mastery of Asian brush tech- Contemporary Artists has included such niques. Ibsen’s “Cherry Tree in Full distinguished figures as Chaim Gross, Bloom” is a tour de force, combining Adolph Gottlieb, and Jacob Lawrence. Western coloristic vibrancy with a translu- Celebrating the organization’s 90th cence and fluidity unique to Asian ink and anniversary, 59 artists from all areas of the watercolor painting. United States will be featured in “ASCA’s By contrast, Harriet FeBland, another greatly admired New York artist, employs geometry as what she refers to as “the fun- damental language and basis of my life’s work.” FeBland’s special gift for making statements that are not only personal but highly expressive within the stringent disci- pline of hard edge geometric art is evident

Miriam Wills siveness and depth in two dimensions on a relatively smaller scale. Harriet FeBland Lisa Robbins, on the other hand, adheres faithfully to the frontal integrity of the mod- ernist picture plane in her dynamic mono- print, “Introit,” featuring colorful shapes

Harriet Regina Marion

in her construction / painting “Where the Sun Shines,” where schematized black lines within an austere geometric context suggest beams of solar energy akin to van Gogh’s brilliant yellow brushstrokes. Varied postmodern approaches to abstract painting make a particularly strong showing this year: Miriam Wills’s “Royal Lisa Robbins Lines,” for exam- with sensual ple is a contours and composi- serrated tion as edges sus- complex pended in form weightlessly and color against a as Frank mottled Stella’s green field. maximal- Then there ist works is Harriet Rose Sigal Ibsen in painted Regina steel, Marion, Great in 2008,” the latest installment of albeit all whose work the organization’s annual exhibition, at the more in mixed Broome Street Gallery, 498 Broome remark- media Street, from November 4 through 16. able for “Turquoise One member with whose work we are suggest- Souffle” long familiar is the New York artist Rose ing a sim- Continued Sigal Ibsen, who although born in Rumania ilar mas- Raymond Weinstein Ray Shanfeld on page 37

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 The CLWAC Mounts a Major Salon Show at The National Arts Club he 112th Annual Open Exhibition of lithe body draped in a brilliant red garment. was frag- Tthe Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Then there was “The Professor,” Ann mented and named for a scholar and philanthropist who Dalton’s strong portrait of a white-haired stylized in a was the only woman among the 106 wise woman wearing gold hoop earrings and fanciful Founding members of The Metropolitan gesturing expressively with her strong hands. manner that Museum of Art, seen recently at the Children can be difficult subjects for portrai- suggested National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park ture, given that they can be so cute and cap- something South, was one of the organization’s most tivating as to verge on the saccharine. But by Paul Klee diverse shows to date. both Kelly Birkenruth’s “Elle,” a profile of a translated This year’s Honored Artist was Gaile little girl with rubber bands in her hair and into three Snow Gibbs, a selection of whose sensitive Kathryn Rapp’s “Sophie with Grandma’s dimensions; portraits and still life compositions in oils, Necklace” sidestepped the usual pitfalls to Gloria pastels, and watercolors constituted a mini capture the individual personalities of their Spevacek Amy Bright Unfried exhibition within the show unto themselves. diminutive subjects. with a skill- One of our particular favorites was “Tia,” a Finally, a grid of several portraits of people fully simplified marble sculpture called small oil of a fresh-faced young woman that of various ages, combined with two still life “Watchful Cat”; and Joyce Zeller with a revealed Gibbs’s unfailing ability to capture images, made for an evocative realist compo- painting of a longhaired feline subject titled the characters of her sitters with admirable sition by Ann Boyer LePere. “Maggie in Her Favorite Pose” that suggest- insight and technical finesse. Figurative painting and sculpture in gen- ed an uncanny, almost sense of human self- The main body of the show, filling the eral constituted a highlight of the exhibition. possession and vanity. “Zhen Zhen,” on the NAC’s main galleries on both the upper and Jeanette Dick’s pastel “The Red Dress” was other hand, a cat in bronze with a golden especially strong in conception, making a green patina by Serena Bates projected the formal statement even while suggesting a inscrutable poise of an ancient Egyptian dreamy reverie with the figure of a reclining feline deity. woman. Jean T. Kroeber’s marble sculpture, Landscape and cityscape were also well “Girl Dancing,” revealed the artist’s unerring represented. “Guardians of the Marsh” was ability to create semi abstract figures that an atmospherically moody oil by Johanna combine stately grace with a sense of eternal McKenzie, evoking its subject in a range of femininity. By contrast, Miryam Soman- predominantly dark hues. By contrast, Jane Ginsburg’s somewhat more realistic bronze McGraw-Teubner’s painting of a rugged, nude “Dancer” was at once sensual and filled rocky coastline, “Sunlit Afternoon” auspi- with a sense of movement. ciously lived up to its title with its luminous Another gifted sculptor familiar to anyone hues, while another marinescape “Cobb who follows the exhibitions of the CLWAC, Isle” by Lucille Berrill Paulsen, was notewor- Terry Kessler-Schwarz Amy Bright Unfried, re-energized a familiar thy for its spare composition and delicate subject in her bronze “Annunciation,” in color harmonies. And “Solstice” by Adele lower levels, was a cornucopia of styles too which the figure of the angel appears to flow Bloch evoked a blustery snow scene by diverse to do justice to in a single review. through the air in a feathery flurry as it means of the artist’s remarkable fluidity in The most one can do is aim for an impres- touches its hand to that of Mary, combining the medium of watercolor. Opposite virtues sionistic overview and hope it will suggest abstract and the figurative forms in a highly made “Totem,” Elizabeth Wallace’s precise some of the spirit and energy that made this original manner. By contrast, Lee Apt com- and intricate black and white linocut of a jam-packed salon style exhibition so memo- bined an impressive command of space with tall cross in a cemetery set against intricate rable. humor in her large hydrocal head “Naked patterns of bare tree limbs another kind of For starters, Gaile Snow Gibbs was by no Without My Lipstick,” while tour de force. means the only outstanding portrait artist on BJ Coughlin’s bronze of a Among the urban scenes, view. Other compelling interpretations of the kneeling sylph holding a vase Nina Maguire’s big acrylic human visage were offered in various medi- aloft was a neoclassical tour painting “Brooklyn Bridge– ums and styles. “Christy” by Grace DeVito de force. By contrast, Susan Stormy Day,” displayed a depicted a model with dark short hair in a Twardus’s sculpture in the Turner-sque grandeur with its white silk gown clutching a white corsage. unusual mixed media combi- pale yet luminous atmosphere Captured in profile, the painting combined nation of paper, plaster, and and ethereal forms, while the candid quality of a casual snapshot with a marble, imparted to the fig- “Morning Winter Sky” by Kare paradoxical formal power. ure of an elderly woman Williams combined a vertigi- “My Daughter Emerging,” a work in cast pulling a shopping cart an nous view of a city building paper by Elaine Lavalle showed its subject, a affecting nobility. with pristine photorealism. In pretty young woman wearing an expression Animal portraiture is yet “Canal Street, “Anne Kullaf of youthful idealism, literally emerging in another risky subject, since it captured the hustle and bustle relief from the wall. “The Young Girl of Yi,” invites sentimentality. of the crowds on that busy a painting by Ying Feng captured the inno- However, several sculptors in Chinatown thoroughfare, while cent joy of a Chinese youngster in a tradi- this exhibition succeeded in “Union Square Dusk” by Terry tional regional costume. “Connie,” by Gail creating pieces that elevated Kessler-Schwarz evoked a sense Postal was notable for both its pristine real- the subject in various ways: of place and of a particular ism and insight into the strong character of a Priscilla Heep with “Standing moment with dreamy verisimili- beautiful African American model engaging Tall,” a stoneware clay piece tude. the viewer with her compelling gaze and in which the figure of a bird Gail Postal ––Grace Gottlieb 16 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 The Diverse Expressions of Tamara Sanvinich ainting and sculpture are such different a manner that makes “nature morte” a mis- though these animate objects have suddenly Pdisciplines that it is quite unusual to nomer. Her “Still Life with Pumpkins,” for come alive. encounter an artist with equal ability in example is one of her most vital and vibrant These same qualities are even more pro- both. Even more rare is the artist who can pictures, with a rich bouquet of delicate nounced in Sanvinich’s sculptures, particu- carry a personal vision over from one medi- pink and purple flowers bursting from a clay larly those of dancing couples, such as the um to the other, making a statement that is bronze “Tango Argentino,” in which the all of a piece. Tamara Sanvinich, who was man wears a slouch hat like some rakish born in Balarus, educated in Siberia, and character in a story by Borges and the presently lives and works in New York, woman lifts wraps one of her shapely legs proves to be just such an artist in her solo around his waist as the dance begins to exhibition at Jadite Galleries, 413 West 50th verge on an erotic embrace. Street, from November 5 through 29. Just as animated in another manner is Sanvinich, who worked as a geologist in Sanvinich’s clay sculpture “Dolphins,” in the Far East, began drawing, painting, and which two of those remarkable aquatic working in mixed media in the 1980s. After mammals romp in the winning manner coming to New York in 1994, she studied which has endeared them to so many of us. at The Art Students League for ten years, Indeed, without actually anthropomorphiz- perfecting the techniques that make both ing them, the artist manages to capture their her paintings and her sculpture equally “Still Life With Pumpkins” human qualities, once again revealing her appealing. visual wit, as well as the command of form Still life and landscape are often the sub- pot amid a casual-seeming yet an aesthetical- and space that endows her work with formal jects of her oils, watercolors, and pastels, ly exquisite arrangement of gourds on a qualities to match its anecdotal ones. while figures, both human and animal are table top. The small scale of this painting, as Sanvinich’s portrait heads, such as the the subjects that seem most frequently to well as another splendid oil titled “Still Life handsome work in marble, “Head of the inspire her sculptural efforts. Both, however, with Peppers,” enhances the the sense of Girl,” and the grizzled plaster piece possess a kind of warmth of expression that intimacy that makes Sanvinivich’s work so “Portrait of the Old Man,” are especially makes them seem part of the same world, refreshingly unpretentious in an art world impressive and her bronze of a hand point- products of the same sensibility––so much where large scale is too often mistaken for ing an accusing finger at the viewer again so that one can be fairly certain that both importance. In the latter painting, too, the reveals the sense of humor that adds a mediums are at times interchangeable. tipped over flower pot leaning against a col- lighter note to Tamara Sanvinich’s very As a painter in oils, it is clear that Sanvinich orful cluster of peppers amid scattered serious talent. has made a close study of the Old Masters objects on a tablecloth adds to its lively and learned how to animate her subjects in sense of immediacy and visual wit, as ––Byron Coleman Maria Pia Taverna’s Evocative Realm of Shadows hile many take sides today regarding away the layers of pasted down street posters woman’s face at the top of the composition, Wtraditional versus newer media, vehe- for films and consumer products. her head thrown back as though the throes mently espousing the superior aesthetic mer- By virtue of her flawless technique, how- of an erotic event. its or contemporary relevance of one or the ever, Taverna’s Then there is “Il Nuovo Oltre,” in which other, some of the most interesting artists imagery is more a voluptuous woman in a low-cut black are those who evolve a personal synthesis of smoothly accom- gown, decapitated above the lips by the both. One of the most intriguing discoveries plished and seam- edge of the composition, appears to inhabit in this regard is Maria Pia Taverna, a native lessly merged in a some sort of passageway where smaller, of Italy, currently living and working in manner that also more distant figures flit through the shad- Turin, whose work will be on view in the references ows, suggesting some unfolding drama that exhibition “The Odyssey Within,” at Agora Surrealism in terms remains mysteriously elusive. Such images Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from of creating visual possess a decidedly hallucinatory quality; December 12 through January 2, 2009. vocabulary fan- they appear to plumb the depths of the (Reception: Thursday December 18, 2008, tasies and dreams. human subconscious, creating a simultane- 6 to 8pm.) In “Oltre,” for ous sense of delight and dis-ease in the Combining digital imagery with classical example, the lower viewer that makes them a rarity in the cur- “Cauta Attenzione” oil painting techniques on canvas, Taverna portion of a rent artistic climate. creates compositions with an unusual emo- woman’s face looms like a ghostly apparition Considerably more complex is Taverna’s tional impact, which is what finally makes above small, shadowy figures traversing a “L’insensento,” a composition swarming them compelling above and beyond all tech- nocturnal city street under the jaundiced with a multitude of figures in motion in the nical considerations. Her work merges ele- eyes of many lighted windows. manner of certain paintings by her fellow ments of Expressionism, Pop, and other In other works such as “L’ Irrisolto” and Italian forbearers in the Futurist movement, modern art movements in the highly per- “Estatico,” images of the feminine visage are albeit delineated with an exactitude more sonal synthesis that one sees in pictures such expressively distorted in a manner that lends reminiscent of Max Ernst’s major Surrealist as “Cauta Attenzione” and “Oltre,” where them an abstract appeal to match their poet- canvases. The scene suggests an almost sinis- glamourous female faces, reflecting her early ic resonance. The later work is especially ter social turmoil that plays off drastically training in fashion styling, dominate the effective in this manner; after the eye adjusts against the more intimate dream-spaces in composition. Often these faces are cropped to the image, having finally drawn its some of Maria Pia Taverna’s less populated close-ups that seem to hark back to the Arte essence from what at first appears to be a compositions. Povera decollages of earlier Italian artists maze of shadows suggesting fragmented who created compositions from tearing anatomical allusions, one discerns a beautiful –-Lucille Fulcher NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 Catalina Delacroix at Sutton Art Gallery: A New Art Venue and a Rising Art Star Make Mutually Auspicious Duel Debuts ften, the first solo show mounted by a paintings) over the eerie, mask-like face in akin to Abstract Expressionism, the Cobra Onew gallery can tell us much about her composition “The Erosion of Desire” is Group of Scandinavia, and the graffiti-influ- what to expect in future exhibitions. On the a sly reference to the fact that Andy started enced art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. evidence of its premiere exhibition Granted, she seems prey to an by the Belgian painter Catalina eclectic array of inspirations––but Delacroix, one has every reason to isn’t that part and parcel of the expect a great deal from Sutton postmodern approach? Besides, Art Gallery, an elegant new venue she balances opposing tendencies with an international agenda which exquisitely, using them to imbue was seen recently at 407 East 54th her work with remarkable tension Street (between First Avenue and in paintings such as “The Sutton Place South). Gastronome,” where the big face Delacroix, who began incorpo- at the center of the composition is rating photography as a starting swathed in swirling strokes like point for her paintings when she gauze bandages around the face was called upon to quickly con- of Claude Rains in “The Invisible ceive a monumental art project for Man.” the Brussels subway, has a riveting Even more fluid painterly style, at once beautiful and pyrotechnics ala de Kooning dis- grotesque, pleasing and perverse. solve yet another monumental vis- The human face undergoes a vari- age into an elephantine mass, out ety of metamorphoses in her work, of which a single doleful eyeball sometimes producing effects remi- peers hauntingly, in Delacroix’s niscent of Francis Bacon’s startling “The Mask,” while another paint- anatomical anomalies. Delacroix, ing titled “The Thread,” takes a however, obviously possesses a turn for the surreal, making the cooler, more postmodern sensibili- tail of a swimming fish, intersect- ty than the British painter, and her ing with two cherubic porcelain use of photography lends her work statuettes at what may be the bot- Painting by Catalina Delacroix a certain, almost Warhol-esque dis- tom of a goldfish bowl, turn one affection that plays off brilliantly against her out as a shoe illustrator, before becoming of them into a mermaid. emotionally intense subject matter. the Godfather of Pop. Enrique Cubillas, the owner and director (Imagine, if you can, Andy’s electric chair Delacroix herself, after all, worked in of Sutton Art Gallery is a formidable and and car crash silkscreens morphing into advertising and fashion before becoming a quite successful painter in his own right, Expressionist portraits with the repetitious painter widely exhibited throughout who used to be an international banker. He motifs of his cow wallpaper superimposed Europe, Australia, and South Africa, and is known to be a man with sharp instincts on them!) having her first American solo show at and widespread art world contacts. Judging Indeed, like Warhol, Delacroix can be an Sutton Art Gallery. What distinguishes her from his first venture as a New York city arresting, sometimes gaudy, colorist, even from her famous predecessor, however, is an gallerist, one might do worse than to bank without resorting to DayGlo. And one can’t ability to combine real gestural energy with on his taste. help wondering if the high heeled shoes the photographic elements in her paintings, floating (like the fish in some of her other defacing them with her brush in a manner ––Ed McCormack DELLAMARIE PARRILLI

Into The Light WSWest Side Arts Coalition C 1979

December 2 - 31, 2008 “Open 2009” Opening Reception: December 6 January 14 - February 1, 2009 A group photography exhibit *catalogue available upon request curated by Jennifer Holst featuring Walter Wickiser Gallery Inc. members of the WSAC 210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 303. New York, NY 10001 212 941 1817 Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm www.walterwickisergallery.com [email protected] [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

18 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Danish Painter Per Hillo Delineates Our Interconnectedness ew contemporary paintings evoke the in his paintings, form and color. Indeed, it is the intu- Funderlying energies of all things as dynam- wherein the bound- itive choices that he apparently makes ically as those of Per Hillo, an artist from aries between the var- in the act of painting, rather than any Denmark, on view at Agora Gallery, 530 West ious elements contrived intellectual formulation, 25th Street, from January 6 to 27, 2009. become nearly indis- plan, or forethought, that imbues his (Reception Thursday, January 8, 6 to 8 pm.) tinguishable, merging compositions with such irresistible For although his paintings contain in the graceful per- energy and contagious verve. images, the overriding element in Hillo’s mutations of his flow- Titles such as ”Life and compositions is energy itself, expressed lin- ing lines and the Opportunity,” “Flowers of Love,” early in a manner different from yet akin in forms that they delin- and “We Are Growing Together” its own way to how van Gogh’s jotted eate. Indeed, the line seem to express the visual metaphors strokes energized his canvases, making between abstraction that Hillo generates through his poplar trees dance like flames and flowers and representation is mergers of plant forms and the appear to wiggle on their stems. all but erased by the human figure, conveying a sense of “Life and Opportunity” In Hillo’s case, everything in his paint- free flowing move- the interconnectedness of all things ings is submerged in an organic environ- ments of Hillo’s brush, which also makes a in nature, not only through line, but also ment wherein plant forms, groups of human mockery of what we normally think of as through the often close-valued colors which figures and other elements merge within the the comparative scale of individual things. knit his compositions together both formally confines of his restless, constantly probing Sensual plant forms, for example, often and chromatically. line and subtle color harmonies. loom much larger than the human figure, In terms of composition, Hillo can only be The artist––whose imagery has been seen which may be enmeshed between their termed a “Maximalist” for his habit of filling everywhere, from mural scale decorations leaves, along with faces and abstract forms almost the entire picture space with a lively for a luxury hotel in Dubai to giant paint- that defy specific description. The thrust of array of shapes that appear to swarm before ings for corporate offices to the CD cover of Hillo’s pictures is invariably Expressionist in the eyes, forming as they flow contours both the recently deceased jazz musician Niels the same undogmatic manner as the school recognizable and abstract. All, however, are Henning Ørsted Pedersen to more than of mostly Scandinavian artists known as the animated by the selfsame energies that con- twenty huge works for a chain of banks in Cobra group. verge with seeming effortlessness from the Copenhagen––states simply, “My art is Like his fellow Danish painter Asger Jorn, artist’s brush, lush and sumptuous. about communication and about the way the most well known member of that move- Per Hillo appears to be one of those natu- we interact.” ment, Hillo is a marvelously fluent painter ral born painters who spring up fully Visually, Hillo expresses this idea by virtue for whom every painting is obviously driven formed, acutely attuned to their own inner of the interconnectedness of all the images by emotion and an unerring instinct for music. ––Maurice Taplinger WSAC Photo Artists Focus on “Urban Landscapes” recent exhibition of photographers to a trendy young couple strolling across site suggests a man-made Grand Canyon. Aassociated with the West Side Arts the street with a newly restored mural by For the most part, Jennifer Holst focus- Coalition demonstrated either that Keith Haring brightening up the back- es on the formal patterns of sunlight and Gotham is an inexhaustible subject, or that ground. shadows on city rooftops. In Holst’s good artists never run out of new angles In her “Down Under the Brooklyn “Roof Garden,” however, tomatoes on a of vision...or, perhaps, both. Bridge” series of exquisitely tonal black vine and lined up on a ledge to ripen cre- Among the more romantic images in and white silver gelatin prints, Jean ate a delightful pastoral contrast to the “Urban Landscapes,” at Broadway Mall Prytyskacz gives intimate glimpses of a unyielding brick and concrete of the sur- Community Center, on the center island Brooklyn neighborhood that has evolved rounding urban landscape. at Broadway and 96th Street, were the from an industrial area to the art district Ellen Zaroff employs black and white hand-colored photographs of David known by the acronym “Dumbo.” But to lend drama to her digital print of a Ruskin, who also curated the exhibition. rather than focusing on its arty aspects, shoeshine boy gazing up from his work on Especially atmospheric was Ruskin’s Prytyskacz ‘s pictures make formal––and a customer’s gleaming oxfords with the “Westminster, London” capturing Gothic perhaps elegiac––statements with views of still innocent eyes of a child affecting a spires and steeples silhouetted against a the bridge, the river, and a lone pedestrian pose of worldly street-smarts. Here as in storm-pregnant sky in the dreamy tints on the promenade fiddling with what her other digital prints, Zaroff reveal her that make us see even more familiar locales appears to be a camera. keen sympathy for the eternal underdog. like our own Union Square in a more In Cal Eagle’s “Wonder Wheel,” a big Shirley Z. Piniat’s visual wit comes poetic light. green ferris wheel looms high above the across most strongly in her picture,”City By contrast, Don Sichler creates semi- faux-craggy facade of an out of season Wedding.” In it, a lucky flock of pigeons abstract or slightly surreal compositions amusement park, creating an ambiance on a lawn enjoys a banquet of flung rice in from unexpected juxtapositions of urban straight out of a Ray Bradbury short story. the foreground, while the bride and details. In his “Citibank,” two office tow- But perhaps Eagle’s most classically atmos- groom are now so far in the background ers, reflected in a grid of glass panes, take pheric picture is “Manhattan Sunset,” with as to appear like miniature figures on a on a lopsided vertiginousness akin to the silhouettes of water towers set against a wedding cake. cubistic citycapes of Abraham Walkowitz. fiery tangerine sky. Also including pictures by the African Paul Margolis’s digital prints chart the In one of Dan Gelb’s darkly dramatic photographer Udeaku Chikezie which had evolution of New York’s historical Bowery digital prints, ironically titled,”Portrait of not yet been hung when the show was from fleabitten skid row to gentrified Going on with Life,” shadowy figures reviewed, “Urban Landscapes” presented haven for affluent hipsters. His images seem to mill around like sleepwalkers in a surprising fresh views of a timeless subject. range from a homeless man sitting forlorn- large public space. In his “Foundation,” ly on the doorstep of the Bowery Mission the great gaping hole of a construction ––Maureen Flynn

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 ALFRED KUBIN IN THE NIGHT MUSEUM by Ed McCormack Of course, it could also have to do with gruesome fancy but did not yield to them.” my being immersed lately not only in Werner went on to liken how Kubin coped Kubin’s book but also in the equally phan- with them to how “the prehistoric hunter tasmagoric ink drawings for which he is bet- vanquished his fear of dangerous beasts by ter known. A reproduction of one of them drawing their likenesses on cave walls.” is taped to the wall near the window in front In “Sterben (Dying),” ca. 1899, for of my desk. It depicts William Blake at his example, the artist unflinchingly foresees his work table, his wife, Catherine, who hand- own demise with an image of a sickly, colored many of his self-published booklets sunken-cheeked older self reclining on his of illuminated poems, hovering like a deathbed, as a more vibrant youthful self- guardian angel in the shadowy crosshatch- portrait floats above his head, illuminating ing nearby. the surrounding darkness like a vision in a I taped the picture up some time ago cloud of opium smoke. In “Adoration,” because Blake has always been one of my 1900-01, a nude woman waves a pot of artistic heroes, and his workspace, set before incense aloft as she prostrates herself abjectly a window overlooking London, oddly mir- at the hooves of a grotesque, kangaroo-like rors my own. His hovering helpmate also creature with a halo circling its head and reminds me, comfortingly, of how my own eight nipples adorning its bloated torso like wife, Jeannie, whose mechanical aptitude far buttons on an admiral’s coat. In “Die Dame surpasses mine, comes promptly to my res- auf dem Pferd (The Lady on the Horse),” cue when my computer upfucks confound- ca. 1900-01, a severe matron in a silk top ingly and I cry out in alarm. hat and long black dress perches side-saddle Overall, this is one of Kubin’s more pleas- on a huge hobby horse, gazing off imperi- ant pictures since, having always been torn ously as tiny naked men are crushed and dis- between literature and visual art himself, he membered by its blade-like rockers. In must have felt an affectionate kinship with “Jerde Nach besucht uns ein Traum (Every Alfred Kubin in the first year of his resi- the doubly gifted British visionary, Blake. Night We are Haunted by a Dream),” ca. dence in Munich, 1898. Städtische Galerie Certainly it’s much easier to live with than 1902-03,” a slender female nude, her head im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv most of the drawings that I’ve been poring and face obscured by a black shroud, is sus- everal weeks ago, they put up a scaffold over in the profusely illustrated catalog for pended in midair above windblown weeds, around our building to do some seem- the exhibition “Alfred Kubin: Drawings as though in an invisible hammock, her Singly interminable work on the facade, 1897-1909,” which continues through lower limbs metamorphosing below the and ever since, we’ve had to keep the shades January 29, 2009, at Neue Galerie New knees into those of an insect. down to protect our privacy from a motley York Museum for German and Austrian Art, The latter drawing hints that his acquain- crew of men whose shadows loom hugely, 1048 Fifth Avenue. tance Franz Kafka (with whom he bonded intrusively, in the windows when we’re hav- * * * over their mutual hypochondria) may have ing our first cup of tea in bed every morn- In a season of nocturnal theme been among the many artists who fell under ing, as they drill and scrape the brick, mak- shows––starcrossed van Gogh’s night scenes Kubin’s influence, which can also be detect- ing a racket that rankles like a rake dragged at MoMA; moonstruck Blakelock at The ed in the morbidly erotic drawings of the across a blackboard. National Academy Museum––none is more Polish writer and draftsman Bruno Schulz, Often, they joke or argue loudly in some steeped in blackness than the Kubin exhibi- and persists to this day in the dark filmic unfamiliar foreign tongue while they work. tion. Indeed, the light at Neue Galerie, fantasies of the Quay Brothers, particularly (Only once did I catch a snatch of English, located in an elegant old mansion that also “The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.” one man saying to another, “In-content–– houses a stellar collection of Klimts and Artists responded immediately to Kubin’s you know this? Means no can control the Schieles, is so inexplicably dim that one has stark vision, but critical reaction to his first poo poo.”) Sometimes they even sing to squint at the drawings, which are small exhibition of drawings in 1902 at Galerie mournful-sounding songs of their home- and dark anyway, in order to bring them Paul Cassirer, in Berlin, was mixed. While land, wherever that may be. And now this into clear focus. It’s well worth the effort, one critic said he was “still in a state of fer- once airy room on the top floor of a tene- however, provided one is willing to enter a ment but a very promising artist,” another ment apartment overlooking York Avenue, realm far more psychologically naked than called his work “a cry for help.” where I work all day in front of a widow at that encountered in the work of most other * * * my laptop, no longer feels like a rent-stabi- artists. In one of his scattered autobiographical lized ivory tower. With the drawn shades “Kubin was a brave man,” wrote the writings, Kubin recalls his mother’s death shutting out the daylight, it feels more like a Expressionist scholar Dr. Alfred Werner in from tuberculosis in 1887, when he was ten flat in Pearl, the imaginary city of perpetual the catalog of a smaller Kubin exhibition at years old, a scene he revisited many years twilight in the Austrian draftsman and writer Serge Sabarsky Gallery in 1970. “He suf- later in a drawing (not in the exhibition) so Alfred Kubin’s novel “The Other Side.” fered from all the monstrosities born of filled with chilling domestic details as to

20 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Die Promenade (The Promenade), ca. 1904-05 Pen and ink, watercolor, and spray on paper 31.5 x 40 cm (12 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.) Private Collection suggest how deeply its trauma had been man sitting behind his elderly father’s rock- sympathy with their modernist experiments, etched into the boy’s memory. er, milking coins from his long gray hair he was more drawn to the figurative Without seeming aware of how his figure into a top hat, reflects the artist’s painfully imagery of Goya, Rops, Ensor, Redon, and of speech echoes the critique of his first dependent relationship with the scornful other older artists he discovered at the Alte exhibition, he describes how his father lifted indifferent father who drove him to such Pinakpthek museum. But the abstract her “long emaciated body from the bed and despondency at age fifteen that he attempt- artists, with whom he would maintain ran weeping with it through the whole ed suicide at his mother’s grave site with a friendships for the rest of his life, were aware house as though crying out for help.” rusty old revolver that fortuitously misfired. that he was also avant garde in his own A year and a half after his mother’s death, It seems indicative of Kubin’s dependence quirky way. the artist tells us, he was seduced by a preg- on the father whose respect he could never After all, Kubin’s bizarre, dreamlike nant neighbor, adding, “There is only one earn that almost all of his drawings were imagery coincided auspiciously with his fel- essential part I must touch on here. I was done on Katasterpapier, the same paper the low countryman Sigmund Freud’s revolu- just eleven and a half years old when I senior Kubin used in his work as a surveyor. tionary theories regarding the unconscious became involved in sexual play with an older It was his father, however, who finally set mind, which were all the rage all over woman, something that excited me tremen- Kubin free, after all other attempts to edu- Europe around that time, placing him, how- dously and cast its shadows as far as my early cate him in a useful trade had failed, and ever unintentionally, in the eye of the zeit- manhood.” after he suffered a serious mental crisis upon geist. Pregnant nudes are a frequent motif and enlisting in the army and was abruptly dis- * * * sex is often coupled with death in Kubin’s charged, by sending him to Munich to In January of 1903, Kubin’s first brush early work. Perhaps the themes are most study art. There he befriended other young with “early good fortune,” the publication obviously conjoined in a drawing titled “Das artists for the first time and there he of a portfolio of fifteen of his drawings by Ei (The Egg),” ca. 1901-2,” in which a remained for the next seven years, finally at the prominent art patron Hans von Weber, woman with the skeleton of her upper torso home, if a little overwhelmed, in the “bois- was shadowed by the death of his fiance, a exposed above an enormous belly stands terous, witty, and intellectual” atmosphere young Austrian woman named Emmy radiant as a Renaissance madonna beside an of the city’s lively bohemian cafe society. Bayer, whom he had met during a visit back open grave. Among his new acquaintances were the home, and who fell fatally ill with typhus Another drawing, “Vater und sohn young abstract pioneers Vasily Kandinsky, after joining him in Munich. No doubt his (Father and Son)” ca. 1900, of a young Franz Marc, and Paul Klee. While he was in grief was exacerbated by guilt, since she had

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 Adoration, 1900-01 Pen and ink, and spray on paper 29.8 x 27.4 Selbstbetrachtung (Self-Observation), ca. 1901-02 Pen and ink, cm (11 3/4 x 10 7/8 in.) Oberösterreichische Landesmuseen, Linz wash, and spray on paper 31.5 x 39.4 cm (12 3/8 x 15 1/2 in.) Albertina, Vienna made the trip at his insistence, after having Perhaps what his work proves most con- In 1907 Kubin’s father died, leaving him asked to postpone it because she was feeling vincingly is that a distinctive style can be as to sort out the complex emotions of their unwell. According to his autobiography, he much a result of one’s limitations as one’s unhappy relationship. At the same time, his underwent a period of “dreadful despair” natural aptitudes. wife’s health was continuing to deteriorate and his mind “threatened to lose its equilib- This point is best illustrated by compar- and her morphine addiction to accelerate. rium.” ing Kubin’s drawing of a man confronting He was plagued by financial difficulties and But a year later, in a letter to his friend his own severed head, “Selbstbetrachtung found himself “unable to draw a coherent the Hoffmann scholar Hans von Muller, (Self Observation),” ca. 1901-02,” to line.” As a temporary creative outlet to illustrated with an uncharacteristically blithe “Alpdruken (Nightmares), 1879,” a draw- divert him from his problems, he began to pen and ink sketch of a dancing couple, he ing of a similar subject by Max Klinger.The write an adventure story that soon turned wrote, “I am almost afraid of my happiness. two drawings are juxtaposed on adjoining into a strange personal allegory about a I am in love with the most ethereal of wid- pages in the Neue Galerie catalog to draftsman (later to be depicted in the book’s ows and will marry in three weeks.” demonstrate the influence that Klinger had frontispiece illustration with a likeness of After he married Hedwig Grundlier, who on Kubin, who admired his work greatly as himself at his drawing board) who is lured was several years older than him and several a young man. But what they really show is away from his home in Munich to a myste- years widowed, Kubin attributed the that, while Klinger’s academic mastery of rious realm called the Dream Kingdom, brighter colors that began to appear in some anatomy lends his drawing the repulsive populated by “outcasts from the world of of his works in ink and watercolor to “hav- starkness of a medical illustration, Kubin’s reality who have escaped into a world of ing a regular sex life.” The couple was able technical shortcomings stylize even the imagination.” to purchase a small castle in the Austrian grotesque subject of decapitation sufficiently Just as the theme suggests the belea- countryside where Kubin imagined that he to make it aesthetically palatable. There is guered Kubin’s own sense of isolation and would be able to live and work in contented no question that while Klinger is the more longing for escape, the vivid descriptiveness seclusion. However, his elation soon ended accomplished draftsman, Kubin is the of the prose poignantly hints at his thwarted and his palette darkened again when greater artist. desire to draw.Even his tonal technique, Hedwig came down with a chronic infec- Indeed, it is doubtful that any more con- with its gray washes and sprayed mists of tious disease a little more than a year into ventional draftsman could have made the India ink, is reflected in the perennially over- their marriage and became addicted to mor- products of Kubin’s fantastic imagination as cast weather of the Dream Realm, phine for the pain. Over the next twenty convincing. For he improvised as imagina- where,“the barometer was permanently years, although there were some relatively tively as a medieval illuminator in a northern fixed on dull and cloudy.” untroubled and productive periods, she clime who, called upon to draw a jungle Kubin, who would later call the novel would periodically be forced to spend sever- lion, might have conjured up a creature “a sort of Baedeker for those lands which al months at a time in sanitoriums, leaving resembling the long-necked, sphinx-like are half known to us, describes Pearl, the the artist once again alone and at the mercy feline in Kubin’s drawing “Fantastic Beast.” capitol of the Dream Kingdom, as a city of of his demons. Kubin’s sometimes awkward drawing style “narrow alleys and malodorous taverns” * * * oddly enhanced the verisimilitude of his fan- located in a landscape where “a mighty Kubin has to be considered one of the ciful figures, making them blend holistically river, the Negro, had its source...plunging great graphic geniuses of the twentieth with the settings in which he placed them, down the cliffs in wild cascades, then pass- Century, but he was by no means a great enabling him to create a world entire. ing through a gorge to emerge as a broad, draftsman by any conventional measure. * * * sluggish stream whose waters were strikingly

22 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 dark, almost inky black.” Again, the description evokes the very materials with which he drew, just as his prose vision of Pearl’s population mirrors the eccentric figures in his graphic oeuvre: “There were splendid drunkards, poor wretches who were out of sorts with themselves and the world, hypochondriacs, spiri- tualists, wild hotheads always ready for a fight, some look- ing for excitement to stir their jaded appetites, others looking for a respite from a life of philandering, acrobats, political refugees...even some murderers, counterfeiters, and thieves who were wanted in other countries... Sometimes the possession of a striking physical feature was sufficient for a person to be called to the Dream Realm.That explained the many kingsize goitres, over- grown noses, and gigantic hunchbacks. Finally, there were a number of people liv- ing here whose nature had been twisted by some dark fate.” Obviously feeling that he had been twisted by his own dark fate, Kubin wrote “from an inner compulsion,” just as he had always drawn, work- ing night and day, complet- ing the novel in twelve weeks.What began as a nerv- ous diversion turned into an obsession, a fictionalized meditation on dreams, art, and decadence that leads to an apocalyptic ending, with Der Letzte König (The Last King), ca. 1902 Pen and ink, and spray on paper 37.1 x 28.2 cm (14 5/8 x 11 “Piles of rubble, marshy 1/8 in.) John S. Newberry Fund The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. ground, broken bricks: the gigantic garbage tip that was once a city, still Since the exhibition at Neue Galerie aforementioned late (1930) drawing of his all wreathed in bluish morning mist.” breaks off in 1909, the drawings for “The distraught father lifting the limp body of his Miraculously, in the act of writing his Other Side,” completed in 1908, are among mother from her death bed. novel, the vivid descriptiveness of which the few examples on view of Kubin’s late * * * constituted a kind of drawing in prose, style, in which, for the most part, he aban- “It feels like Halloween in here,” Jeannie Kubin regained his ability to draw in line, doned tone for line. Although some of the joked when we first toured the Kubin exhi- and in four weeks more of feverish work, dark psychological atmosphere of his early bition, with its dim lighting, the artist’s created a suite of pictures so intimately drawings was lost when he dispensed with black hat and cloak displayed in a wall vit- interwoven with his words as to be more his deep gray washes and sprayed tones, a rine, and his bronze death mask laid out in a accurately termed illuminations rather than new fluidity as well as a more fanciful delin- glass-covered funeral bier. illustrations of the text.With these draw- eation of character came into his work at Only later, when we stopped in ings––one depicting a pile of naked bodies that time. And with maturity, his subject Starbuck’s for tea and looked at all the pam- eerily prophetic of atrocities to come matter also broadened to include some gen- phlets we had picked up at the Neue decades later, when he would be among the tler rustic fantasies and less tormented satiri- Galerie, did we learn that, along with the “degenerate artists” banned by the cal scenes, some of which appeared, along- regular Weimar-style cabaret performances Nazis––Kubin broke through to a new lin- side the work of other great draftsmen such staged in the museum’s elegant Cafe ear style with which he would eventually as Grosz, Gulbransson, and Steinlen, in the Sabarsky, there would be “a special illustrate over 100 books by Poe, German graphics journal Simplicissumus. Halloween cocktail party in connection with Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hoffmann, and other But that he could still evoke a haunting the Kubin exhibition.” kindred spirits. response in line alone is amply evident in the And given how high art is compelled to

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 Sterben (Dying), ca. 1899 Pen and ink, wash, and spray on paper 21 x 30.2 cm (8 5/16 x 11 15/16 in.) Private Collection, New York compete for attention nowadays watercolors mixed with paste, with the flashier attractions of an included in the exhibition, demon- all-pervasive popular culture, it strate all too well. He was actually seemed no more hokey to tie something much more rare: an Kubin in with Halloween than to artist who delineated his innermost almost exclusively feature his fears, dreams, and fantasies directly more dramatic, spookier early from his fragile nervous system work in the first ever American onto small sheets of paper in the museum survey of career. For in bare-bones medium of pen and an era when a jaded, over-enter- ink. Much like Aubrey Beardsley, tained public has come to expect whom he greatly admired and dead sharks floating in tanks of whose death he memorialized in a formaldehyde and diamond late line drawing of a skeleton in a encrusted human skulls, art this frilly blouse embracing an emaciat- physically unassuming and intro- ed young man, as well as his other spective is almost certain to be great peer William Blake, Alfred overshadowed, unless its more Kubin was a doubly gifted oddball novel attributes are emphasized. genius who tightrope-walked gin- So one can’t blame the Neue gerly on the fine line between visu- Galerie’s director, Renee Price, al art and literature. for referring to Kubin as an “Austrian Goya” in promotional radio spots on the classical radio * * * station that plays all day in our kitchen to entertain Pip, our parakeet, even though it’s slightly misleading. Granted, he was taken with Goya’s etchings early in his career, but unlike the Spanish master, Kubin was never Jede Nacht besucht uns ein Traum (Every Night We are Haunted much of a painter, as his muddy by a Dream), ca. 1902-03 Pen and ink, brush, wash, and spray on efforts in the mucky medium of paper 39.1 x 31.8 cm (15 3/8 x 12 1/2 in.) Albertina, Vienna

24 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Elinore Bucholtz and the Art of the Chromatic Embrace t is indicative of Elinore Bucholtz’s erudi- (the scale that de Kooning preferred, as the bold vigor of her brushwork is self-evi- Ition that she titled her recent exhibition opposed to the often overblown scale of dent. Obviously her process is one of con- of paintings at The Berkeley Gallery, 3 East Pollock), all shared the title “Color-full.” siderable velocity, judging from the apparent 43rd Street, “For... ‘Those Which Love The title seemed thoughtfully chosen in swiftness of her forms and the splashy splat- Color the Most,’” a phrase from “The ters of pink that are especially evident in Stones of Venice,” by the great nineteenth Kaleidoscope 4,” providing piquant accents century British writer, critic and artist John to the festive overall color saturation. Ruskin. For although Bucholtz works in an Fairfield Porter, one of the few critics abstract style far too contemporary for even who possessed talent as a painter to match the visionary Ruskin to have imagined, she his verbal skill, once wrote that “energy is a is indeed a colorist whose work exerts a bridge to whatever is essential,” and certain- wide appeal. ly this is true of Bucholtz’s work, wherein Although the gestural element that one color takes wing on the force of gesture. associates with Abstract Expressionism is also Indeed, the gestures in Elinore a strong component of Bucholtz’s paintings, Bucholtz’s paintings possess an autonomous as much as any artist one can name, her force, independent of either illusion or allu- work calls to mind the definition “color con- sion. Whereas in many cases one can discern struction,” since she employs broad strokes vestiges of landscape, the figure, or still-life of the brush and possibly the palette knife to “Color-full 2” in even the most nonobjective composi- lay down brilliant hues that function as the terms of the lush robustness of their total tions, Bucholtz’s canvases are abstract in the actual building blocks of her compositions. effect, giving the viewer the sensation of purest sense of the term. They make no Her colors have a fresh purity and an almost being engulfed in a warm optical embrace. attempt to cajole us with vestiges of visual confectionery (but never saccharine) deli- Especially warm in that regard is “Color- familiarity. They simply engage the viewer ciousness that makes them fairly pulse with full, 2,” owning to the artist’s liberal use of wholeheartedly with their swift bold strokes energy. Brilliant reds, yellows and oranges vie bright red hues in concert with large and one need search no further for any with various shades of blue, along with fleshy swatches of orange converging on a field of image that does not immediately meet the pinks and luminous greens that make her what appears to be cobalt turquoise light, eye, content to ride their buoyant rhythms compositions sing chromatically. perhaps mixed with ultramarine, comple- and luxuriate in the sheer sensuality of color Apart from two smaller companion can- mented by darker blue hues verging on a at maximum intensity. (Elinore Bucholtz’s vases aptly titled, respectively, purpler range. While one can guess at the work can be seen on her website: “Kaleidoscope,” numbers 3 and 4, the other color combinations through which, by judi- web.mac.com/elinorebucholtz) paintings in the exhibition, which were large cious mixing, layering and scumbling, ––Byron Coleman but comfortably attuned to the human body Bucholtz accomplishes her chromatic magic, Science and Art Intermarry in the Paintings of Marika Berlind lthough those of limited vision may of Forrest Bess, an artist generally unknown ous. They seem to express specific phenom- Athink of science as a cut and dry subject, to the public but greatly admired by many ena, even while their exact meanings remain every true scientist is involved in a search for fellow painters. For like Bess, Berlind creates elusive. In “Oval Hole,” for example, a the unknown. Thus the compositions dominated slightly off-kilter white form glows like a Greek-born San by forms that can be read stylized diamond from a deep brown Francisco-based painter as esoteric symbols, many ground. By contrast, in “Dust Hole,” fun- Marika Berlind, who of them are based on what nel-shaped beams seem to shoot out from a combines her dual she calls “Strings” (“ele- dark orb, illuminating a deep blue ground loves–– Astronomy / mentary particles as vibrat- that suggests an endless expanse. Mathematics and Art–– ing loops”), “Holes” In regard to the latter work, while the in her work, can confi- (“regions of space which image is certainly compelling enough to dently state, “I do not pull all matter in”) and command one’s attention in its own right, aspire for my art to be a “Scapes” (“lightscapes; in order to better understand her intentions, didactic tool to explain darkscapes; another- it is instructive to know that the artist has science. Rather, I wish scapes”). stated, “We are literally made of the dust of to provide an alternative As the reader has proba- stars. The origin of all existence is in the means by which to bly already gathered, these most elementary breakdown of the objects explore science, through “Distorted String Spaces 1 & 2” are only partial definitions of astronomical observation. Our material a momentary visual of the elements of psychological, and mental selves have their experience of ‘living in the universe.” Berlind’s highly subjective cosmology, and origin in these cosmic sources.” The results of Berlind’s “research” can be hardly do justice to the visual attributes that If that sounds metaphysical, well, perhaps seen at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, make her paintings so compelling as objects that’s the point. Art, like science, is a search from December 12 through January 2, of art. for the unknown that reaches to the very 2009. (Reception: Thursday, December 18, For one thing, her forms––the graceful limits of our experience and our understand- 6 to 8pm.) One need not have any knowl- red spiral set against a starry night sky in ing. In this regard, the two disciplines are edge of or interest in science to savor and be “Red String”; the rhythmic horizontal much closer than many may think, or be enriched by the purely formal attributes of stripes of vibrant orange and ocher in willing to admit. Few artists make this point her abstract oils on canvas with their strong “Anotherscape V”; the sensual brown and as successfully as Marika Berlind. But her colors and luscious surfaces, which catch the silver forms in the powerful diptych success finally lies in her artistic, rather than light with their rich sheen. Stylistically, her “Distorted Spring Spaces 1 & 2” –– are her scientific, innovation. paintings share certain affinities with those extraordinarily allusive without being obvi- ––Marie R. Pagano

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 Transcending Boundaries is Second Nature for the Painter NAT he term “abstract realism,” coined by set suggest the towers of a modernistic city measure of the metaphysical at work in Tanother writer for this publication some built in the desert, they are adamantly mini- these paintings, a kind of visual interroga- time ago, could sound oxymoronic until malistic and the artist’s patchy paint applica- tion of the nature of seeing that comes one encounters the work of an artist to tion seems to reference the interwoven across most insistently in a composition such whom it aptly applies. One of the most planes of cubism. Then there is “Alle as “Ice Dream,” which suggests a vast arctic accomplished among them to appear on Sepie,” where the shallow space of the pic- expanse evoked with a crystalline clarity these shores in recent months is the French ture plane prevails, while the imagery veers reminiscent of the desolate surrealist terrains artist known curiously by the sharply between a real- of Yves Tanguy. At the same time, simply by capitalized mononym of istically rendered shifting one’s mindset and point of view, the NAT, whose paintings seem seashell suspended in abstract spareness of the forms can make any to be all about maintaining space and a precise red literal reading in relation to subject matter an exquisite balance between line positioned some seem irrelevant to the painter’s primary the actual and the abstract. distance below it on a intention. In NAT’s exhibition at subtly modulated gray Amid all these playful perceptual ploys, Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th ground. As seen here, the one constant in all of NAT’s composi- Street, from January 6 one of the pleasures of tions is her intimate engagement with the through 27, with a reception viewing NAT’s work is act of painting itself, which is revealed in the on January 8, 2009 from 6 sharing the pleasure luminous clarity of her colors and the unfail- to 8pm, the two supposedly that she takes in creat- ing finesse with which she works her sur- opposing poles of expression ing complex visual faces. Indeed, it seems no arbitrary decision are skillfully united in works conundrums from par- on her part to work in oil on linen, the such as “Olympe.” Here, “Olympe” adoxically simple ele- medium of the Old Masters, for no other clusters of red berries, evoked ments that question materials would seem suitable to the exqui- with consummate realist finesse, are set our perceptions of what is and what is not site refinement of her technique and the within an ambiguous space suggesting a tilt- real. Often her forms appear to be very spe- manner in which it enables her to transcend ed canvas within the canvas, poised between cific depictions of imaginary objects, rather the arbitrary boundaries between the the illusion of deep space and the reality of than abstract shapes, while, conversely, the nonobjective and the representational to the two dimensional picture plane. recognizable things that she includes in her create paintings that stand on their own sin- By contrast, while the four tall rectangu- compositions read as primarily abstract gular merits. lar forms in NAT’s composition “Dubai” devices employed purely for formal effect. ––Marie R. Pagano and the color areas against which they are Obviously, there is more than a small

G&S NYC GUIDE opportunities ARTIST’S EXHIBITION SPACE TO SHARE Elegantly appointed gallery WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION (WSAC) established 1979, welcomes in exclusive uptown location welcomes inquiries from artists and curators. For new members from all geographic areas. There are approximately 14 information: (212) 753-0884 Cell (917) 544-6846 [email protected] exhibits per year for Fine Arts, Photography, and Craft Arts. Music, Poetry, Theater and Dance programs available. Contact info: Tel. 212-316-6024, AMERICAN WATERCOLOR SOCIETY, INC., 142nd. Annual email- [email protected] or website- www.wsacny.org. Or send SASE to International Exhibition. Estimated $40,000 in cash awards. March 31 the West Side Arts Coalition, PO Box 527, Cathedral Station, New York, – April 26, 2009. Slide or Digital entries, postmarked no later than NY 10025. Visit our ground floor gallery at 96th Street & Broadway (on the Nov. 15, 2008. Prospectus available after Sept. 1st. Send SASE center island) New York City. Open: Wed. 6-8pm, Sat. & Sun., 12-6pm. to American Watercolor Society, 47 Fifth Ave., NY, NY 10003, or download from website, www.americanwatercolorsociety.org. CUSTOM PICTURE FRAMING for artists and galleries. Museum quality, selected frames & mats. Float & dry mounting, canvas stretching. POETRY AND WRITING MENTOR. Award winning artist and pub- Jadite Galleries, 662 10th Ave. (betw. 46/47 Sts.) Hours: 12 - 6 pm, lished poet will work with visual artists who want to write poetry. Learn to Free delivery in Manhattan. 212-977-6190 [email protected] paint and collage with words, sculpt with sound and think of negative space equivalent to the silences between words. Enjoy the advantage of PLEIADES GALLERY 530 West 25th St, New York, NY 10001-5516 being an artist and thinking visually, which is plus to a writer. Your life presents its 27th Annual Juried Exhibition, July 9 - August 1, 2009. Open to experiences are your palette, your pen is your brush. Write for yourself, to all media. This year‘s juror is Nat Trotman, Assistant Curator at the Solomon preserve your history, for publication, or just for the joy of writing. Receive R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. Entry deadline: April 18, 2009. feedback through e mail and telephone conferences. Beginning and experi- Please download the prospectus from www.pleiadesgallery.com For further information call 1-646-230-0056 websites ESTABLISHED CHELSEA GALLERY reviews artist portfolios monthly. FREE & GREEN: “The Complete Guide to New York Art Galleries: The Send sase or visit www.noho gallery.com for application form. Noho Most Comprehensive Resource of its Kind” by Renée Phillips, is now pub- Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001. 212 367-7063 lished on the Manhattan Arts International website for visitors to read Free. This Online Directory has detailed profiles of hundreds of New York City PAINT NEW YORK! ART WORKSHOPS Learn to paint cityscapes en Art Galleries, Private Dealers, Non-profit Exhibition Organizations, plein air with master instructors. Visit paintnyartworkshops.com Museums, and Alternative Exhibition Spaces with links to their websites. for schedules. (516) 374-1904, Contact names, style of art shown, artists shown, mission statement, year (718) 377-7779 established, how artists should approach them, and much more is provid- ed! Go to www.New-York-Art-Galleries.com and locate the New York art MONTSERRAT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY is reviewing artist gallery that is appropriate for you. portofolios for its new Chelsea Gallery. National and International artists are invited to submit. Sase, slides, photos and brief artist bio. Send to: N*des-of-the-Month, barebrush.com, dedicated to the art of the Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27 Street, NYC 10001 n*de. Today’s art exposed. “The Sexy Art Calendar“

26 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 “Talent 2008” at Allan Stone Gallery: A Testament of Faith ndy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, those of his savvy daughter, Claudia acrylic on wall paper, “I Poet # 2” ARobert Ryman and Eva Hesse were Stone, is its utter disregard for that springs from a synthesis of American-style among the many artists who, over the species of “foolish consistency” that action painting and the hit and run tac- past forty-six years, got important early Emerson defined as “the hobgoblin of tics of Zen literati painting. A regular exposure in the annual “Talent” emerg- little minds.” Thus, Christina participant in these annual surveys, ing artists salons, at Allan Stone Gallery, Mosegaard’s small, meticulously painted Ducmanh’s style epitomizes a gestural in recent years located at 113 East 90th Magic Realist oils of serene female faces, velocity very much in keeping with Allan Street. which she aptly titles “Icons,” mingle Stone Gallery’s long association with the “Talent 2008” demonstrated that the amiably with David Wells Roth’s roman- New York School of Abstract gallery still outdoes any other major tically desolate streetscapes and Chris Expressionism. venue around when it comes to display- Duncan’s ruggedly contorted steel sculp- Joan Levy, who endows her large oil, ing not only an unorthodox catholicism tures. Far from seeming strange bedfel- “Forest Orchid” with a gritty muscularity of taste but a level of aesthetic quality lows, together they make a larger point and visual impact rarely seen in a floral that makes stylistic disparities a moot about a continuum of aesthetic delecta- subject, also connects to the Ab-Ex tradi- point. tion that stretches from the Renaissance tion in her own way; while Brian It seems safe to say that nowhere else through David Smith. Haverlock’s monochromatic miniature in town will one encounter such comple- One new discovery (at least for this figurative works in graphite and oil are as mentary contrasts as those between Gina writer) was Alex Yudzon, whose works in spookily surreal as Victorian death por- Minichino’s four inch square realist oils ink on large sheets of paper exemplify the traits. of peanut butter and jelly on a cracker new attitude toward drawing as a com- Also featuring Tom Chapin’s darkly and Peter Anton’s gigantic mixed media plete art form, rather than a medium for evocative stone and steel sculptures; an candy samplers; Richard Haden’s trompe sketches or studies. As titles such as intricate “Cubic” (as opposed to l’oeil polychromed wood Clorox bottle “Magic Mountain” and “Impossible “Cubist”) oil by Bruce Pollock; Richard and Ralph Turturro’s lusciously tactile Cloud” suggest, Yudzon appears to be Heinsohn’s sinuous abstraction “Carnival mixed media abstractions; Emily Epstein influenced by traditional Chinese ink of Thought”; a nicely finessed nude in an Vines’ scathingly satirical ceramic effigies painting. Yet his quirky topographical interior by John Goodman; and Andrew of George W. Bush and Dick Chaney and imagery, in which the dots don’t quite Nash’s inexplicably poignant painting of Robert Valdes’ exquisitely atmospheric connect to turn his compositions into bowing sunflowers, “Talent 2008” little landscape in gouache on paper. landscapes, evokes a mental, rather than seemed a testament of faith in the ability One of the most refreshing aspects of earthly, terrain. of fruitful artistic endeavor to eternally Allan Stone Gallery, both under the aus- Then there is Nguyen Ducmanh, rejuvenate itself. pices of its legendary late namesake and whose spontaneous composition in ––Ed McCormack “Uncle Vanya” Sets the Stage for Art in the Theater District he relationship between theater and clothed woman seated pensively in a chair ing, thickly impastoed metallic ground. In Tvisual art has always been a close one, between them. Since it was titled “Opera “Follow Me,” however, Tilikevich evokes a with many painters either moonlighting as Night,” Ihrig’s skillfully painted scene could seemingly supernatural realm where lumi- set designers or depicting theatrical subjects. either suggest a dressing room backstage nous phantoms, composed with golden In the latter regard, one of the more inter- before a performance or the erotic subtext of swirls, traverse a cavernous darkness. esting recent exhibitions was “Stage Spirit,” a ménage a trois in the manner of Eric Fischl. For Sandira Reddy, drama lies in the play featuring members of the “New York The theatrical component in the paint- of light, shadow, and color in pastoral scenes Realism Group,” and curated by Leila Elias ings of Andrzej Pietal springs primarily from such as ”Prospect Pond,” where watery and Berik Kulmamirov, at Uncle Vanya Art their festive colors and a rhythmic inter- reflections recall the plein air immediacy of Space Cafe, 315 West 54th Street. weaving of human and animal figures. Impressionism. Reddy, however, is a thor- Named for one of Chekhov’s best known Reminiscent for their flowing linearity of the oughly contemporary painter who brings plays, this charming restaurant with an “automatism” of the surrealist painter print- her own brand of boldness, akin to Abstract excellent Russian menu in the theater dis- maker and stage designer Andre Masson, Expressionism, to her gestural handling of trict provided the perfect venue for the inti- Pietal’s pictures meld disparate figurative chiaroscuro. mate exhibition of mostly figurative art. forms together in maze-like compositions Then there is Victor Bond Espinosa, who While some works referred to particular the- that succeed by virtue of their abstract reminds one of the Russian born American atrical subjects or personalities, others were attributes. painter and stage designer Pavel Tchelitchew theatrical in a broader sense, by virtue of Andrey Punchenko is another painter for his Neo-Romantic way with landscape their narrative drama. Among the most liter- who combines figurative and abstract forms and figure compositions. In “Nanay’s al were Bill Edmonds’ Expressionist por- in a particularly postmodern manner. In Nature,” for example, Espinosa makes the traits of the flamboyant rock singer Axel “Leningrad Region of Uncle Vanya” mat framing a sequence of four fanciful Rose, a trumpeter, and a female jazz Punchenko combined strong forms and miniature landscapes function as part of the chanteuse who, although not named, were vibrant colors to almost cinematic effect, composition by painting a white-on-white dead ringers for Miles Davis and Billy with images such of a woman, a dog, and figure directly onto it. Holiday, respectively. Subdued, moody col- fragments of interior and exterior spaces lay- Leila Elias and Berik Kulmamirov, both ors and rugged textures made Edmonds’ ered within a roughly geometric context for fine artists in their own right, proved them- paintings especially evocative. strong formal impact. selves to be adventurous curators with this Compelling in another manner, a realist By contrast, Sabrina Tilikevich takes a thoughtful, thoroughly enjoyable exhibition. composition by Marc Burgess Ihrig depicted raw, “art brut” approach to subject matter One can only look forward to future shows three figures in a darkly atmospheric interior: in “Solid Gold,” with its severely simplified and new themes that this talented team may a nude woman, a nude man, and a fully outline of a figure centered on a shimmer- come up with. ––Byron Coleman

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 Luigi Galligani : Humanizing Myths, Restoring Our Sense of Wonder orking primarily in bronze and terra Italian Renaissance and that of the archaic Wcotta, the Italian sculptor Luigi period in Greece and Italy, Galligani has Galligani reinterprets ancient developed a singular personal synthesis, at Mediterranean myths in striking contempo- once respectful of tradition and animated by rary terms, at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th modern immediacy. In his bronze with pati- Street, from December 12 through January na “Sirena Sospettosa,” for example, a 2, 2009. (Reception: Thursday, December gracefully simplified mermaid supporting 18, from 6 - 8pm.) herself with her arms behind her stretches Galligani, who has an impressive exhibi- out like a Hollywood starlet sunbathing tion history, has works in important private beside a swimming pool. Somehow, the “Murena” and public collections world wide. His sculptor manages to impart to this mytho- them with a certain formal credibility. And pieces command attention as much for their logical being a casual deportment that Galligani succeeds splendidly on both inventive forms as for expressiveness and endows her with girl-next-door charm. scores. He is especially adept at making such authenticity. Yet, like those of the American Galligani’s “Medusa,” is also possessed of imaginary appendages as mermaid tails and sculptor Tom Otterness, they are also pos- a contemporary charisma that makes the angel wings blend seamlessly with the more sessed of a lively visual wit. Indeed, he is wreath of serpents writhing from her head expected attributes of ordinary human capable of creating figures that metamor- seem no more prepossessing, much less anatomy through his impressive formal flu- phose in sometimes startling ways without threatening than the layered hair-do of a idity. ever verging on the grotesque. nubile teenager. Perhaps her pert features Indeed, by virtue of his easy familiarity An exemplary case in point is his bronze and modestly lowered eyes also complete with such subject matter Luigi Galligani “Murena,” in which a female nude’s lower the impression that this is a much more demonstrates that the suspension of belief body culminates in a serpentine abstract appealing Medusa than the screaming, bug- that makes it possible to believe in the sym- shape that could suggest stylized waves. It eyed, gape-mouthed monster one is used to. bolic, if not the literal, truth of these ancient takes a rare talent to make such anatomical Galligani seems to have a Pygmalian-like gift stories, can still be possible. And in doing anomalies work, but Galligani accomplishes for “humanizing” such mythic figures by so, he presents us with the great gift of a this by virtue of his fluid sense of form. At virtue of his own humanity and visual wit. renewed sense of wonder. Thus it comes as the same time, he can also create sculptures Paradoxically, this ability to approach no surprise that he has won the favor of so such as the bronze “Dopo il Bagno,” in mythological subjects with a sense of humor many prominent critics and collectors which the straightforward nude female fig- seems essential for any contemporary artist throughout his native Italy and the world. ure is endowed with a long lost classical who wishes to be taken seriously. Yet if one voluptuousness. is to deal with such subjects at all in this day ––Maurice Taplinger Equally influenced by the art of the and age, it is equally important to endow West Side Exhibition Explores Outer and Inner Realities he title “Observations and Concepts” dress in one panel set against Nabi-like floral single stylized hand decorated with a single Treflected the combination of sponta- patterns that merged harmoniously with the eye and an array of esoteric symbols, titled neous and preconceived approaches that completely abstract, rhythmical forms in the “Hand of Fatima.” made for an intriguing recent group show, other three. Working in the unorthodox medium of co-curated by Pamela Belén and Ava As always, Shirley Z. Piniat displayed her watercolor on canvas, Terry Berkowitz Schonberg for the West Side Arts Coalition, special gift for drawing light from darkness employed translucent veils of golden ocher at Broadway Mall Community Center, on in a series of small, moody acrylics of interi- to simultaneously suggest earthy substances the center island at 96th Street and ors and still lifes. One was called “Ode to and otherworldly auras, in three abstract Broadway. Van Gogh,” but Piniat’s compellingly compositions notable for their lyricism. Auspiciously, Ava Schonberg’s work unpretty style seems closer in spirit to the Berkowitz’s forms are as subtle and elusive reflected both aspects of the theme, since rough magic of Rouault. as shadows on the moon. she showed not only a breezy landscape of Ivan Sherman is just the opposite: a tech- Elizabeth K. Hill, on the other hand, is trees like slender dancers in an orchard in St. nical virtuoso whose abstract assemblages in enamored of the concrete, as seen in her Remy-Provence, but also two more formally recycled corrugated cardboard and acrylic brightly emblematic hard-edge acrylic paint- conceived still lifes. In one, the cylindrical possess a showy refinement that never fails ings of red and yellow skyscraper spires set shape of a common roll of paper towels to dazzle the viewer with what he hath against an expanse of brilliant yellow. In stole the show from more elegant and col- wrought from such base materials. Along another strong composition, stacked stools, orful vases. with his formal finesse, however, Sherman easels, and drawing tables in an art studio By contrast Yukako’s watercolors on brings remarkable expressiveness to his work add up to “abstract realism.” handmade rice paper were loosely lyrical as well, particularly in pieces suggesting Although Co-curator Pamela Belén’s inti- explorations of delicately brushed, wind- clouds swirling sinuously around highrise mate canvases have enigmatic colloquial blown gestures in vibrant pastel hues. towers. titles such as “I’ll Talk to You” and “Release Particularly fresh was “Piano,” in which the Suzy Cameleon’s large oil “Conversation Me,” they actually suggest cosmic spaces musician’s sketchily disembodied hands with Five Trees” did indeed suggest a har- with their deep black backgrounds and ethe- floated freely amid graceful musical swirls. monious dialogue of intersecting limbs and real abstract forms. Shot through with bits Roni Lawrence showed four tall vertical leaves, by virtue of her precisely defined of blue, purple, one with hints of a gold canvases, each with a separate title. Yet they forms and skillfully orchestrated color har- grid at its outermost edges, Belén’s paint- functioned as an installation, with the full- monies. Equally pleasing were three small, ings project a mysterious metaphysical length figure of a woman in a black cocktail vertically stacked canvases, each featuring a power. ––Peter Wiley

28 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Noho Gallery’s 4th Annual Auction Offers Great Art Bargains for the Far-Sighted ccording to a recent issue of The Art trator Maurice Sendak, depicting a squared- ANewspaper, a kind of Wall Street off dog and a mysterious veiled woman in Journal for the international art market, an arctic setting; “Study,” a painting of fig- published out of London, curmudgeonly ures in an interior in evocative muted hues critic Robert Hughes dis- by Daniele Marin; “Galactic missed Damien Hirst’s Collision,” a dynamic hand-quilted shark as “Another rich col- hard-edge abstraction by well lector’s Mona Lisa––only known textile artist Marilyn with fins,” and groused that Henrion; “Construction and the outrageous prices Metaphor,” a limited edition giclee demanded by a handful of print by Jeessica Fromm, whose highly hyped artists today solo show is reviewed elsewhere in have only one cultural this issue; “Wall Street Trader,” an value: “To strike you blind, antic imaginary portrait by Anne so you can’t make your Kolin that shows another side of own judgments.” this versatile artist; “Two Breads,” a As the Dow continues to characteristically complex composi- drop like a rock, rise slight- Erma Martin Yost tion in oil by Stephanie ly, then seesaw precariously, discerning col- Rauschenbusch, one of our most imagina- lectors who are still capable of making their tive exponents of realist still life; “Venus own judgments might be well-advised to Tree” and “Reflection Raft,” two fanciful take advantage of a golden opportunity to yet formally engaging hand-felted stitched Stephanie Rauschenbusch

Alexandra Corbin Ludmila Aristova Marilyn Henrion Sheila Hecht acquire art that stands a good chance of constructions by Erma Martin Yost; “Bales,” photo-assemblage style. appreciating without putting too big a dent a boldly brushed landscape in oil on linen Also included are works by other first- in their pocketbooks. by Judith Zeichner Parker, as well as anoth- rate contemporary artists such as Arlene All it takes is a trip to Noho Gallery in er piece titled, “Ellenville Road”; “Mood Baker, Irving Barrett, Jeanne Butler, Chelsea, 530 West 25th Street, for its 4th Swings,” a work in silk and metallic and Rebecca Cooperman, Christopher Green, Annual Art Auction, which runs from December 23 (when silent and on-line bidding begins), through January 17 (when final bids and the live auction will take place at the closing reception, from 4 to 6 pm). For those read- Judith Zeichner Parker Anne Kolin Daniele Marin ers who don’t already know it, Noho Gallery, which has rayon thread by new gallery member Bruce Laird, Nancy Staub Laughlin, Marla been around since 1975, is one of the Ludmilla Aristova, in which quilted abstract Lipkin, Pat Feeney Murrell, Siena Porta, longest running and most respected of the forms are as tactile as oil impasto; “Taking Tina Rohrer, Joy Saville, Chuck von city’s artist-run venues. And never has its Directions,” a vigorous calligraphic abstrac- Schmidt, and Joan Zuckerberg. So, Noho stable of artists been more varied and distin- tion in brown and yellow ocher by gestural Gallery’s 4th Annual Auction should offer guished than now, judging from some of painter Sheila Hecht; and “A Navajo Story” canny collectors the chance to prove that, the works collectors will be able to bid on: and “Ancient Ledger,” two hand-printed unlike those “struck blind” by the inflated “Womandog,” a whimsical drawing by Cibachromes by Leon Yost of prehistoric prices elsewhere, they are not only sighted, Alexandra Corbin in a style reminiscent of petroglyphs juxtaposed with Southwestern but far-sighted as well. the great children’s book author and illus- landscapes, presented in the artist’s recent ––Jeannie McCormack NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 Eric Robin: Conjuring the Face of Suffering and Compassion s a police officer for the city of Brussels, sometimes be unsettling. “Enzo,” whose flesh is tinted Athe Belgian painter Eric Robin came to Some of them seem to a garish green hue. It seems see himself as a “witness of humanity,” and question, others to more likely, however, these that, he says, has been one of his abiding implore, yet others to auras emanate from within, inspirations. Certainly a sense of humanity accuse. All are the mesmer- symbolizing shades of emo- in the raw is everywhere evident in the izing focal point of his tion rather than the play of paintings Robin will be exhibiting at Agora compositions, in which the light on facial pigmentation. Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from January form of the face fills much “My colour use is the 6 through 27, 2009. (Reception January 8, of the canvas, as if the sub- expression of my first sponta- from 6 to 8pm.) ject is leaning forward to neous impression and not of At the same time, lest one give the take the viewer into her what one’s intended to see,” impression that Robin may be an autodidac- confidence. While this may Robin makes clear in an tic “outsider,” it should be noted that he is not be the actual source of “Sarah” artist’s statement for the exhi- actually a sophisticated painter, trained at these compositions, one gets a sense of the bition, in which he also reveals that the first the Brussels Royal Academy of Arts, who emotional intimacy with which a police offi- face he painted in this manner surprised him deliberately chooses to work in a primitivis- cer is confronted daily on active duty, which by turning out to be a portrait of his moth- tic style. In the present series, the subject of lends Robin’s painting an unusual ––per- er, who had been ill for many years. his acrylics on canvas is the female face, haps, for some, even uncomfortable–– pres- “This was a revelation,” he says. “I direct- painted in strong Fauvist colors in bold ence. And it is in this that much of their ly knew exactly how I would like to proceed strokes that show a certain kinship to older power lies. further with this work. I wanted to paint artists such as Rouault and Modigliani, who Robin’s nonliteral use of color is another women and the story of their lives...I saw in worked in a similarly direct manner. attribute of his recent paintings, heightening the sorrow of my mother the suffering of Robin, however, has evolved his own their psychological impact. Given the urban humanity. A mother carries the sorrow of unique approach to the feminine visage, environment a policeman patrols, on the the world within her. Through sadness and making the old truism “the eyes are the night shift in particular, it would be possible despair, lies a source of truth.” windows of the soul” manifest in every to imagine that some of his faces may be Eric Robin has discovered a way to make composition. Usually disproportionately bathed in neon––particularly “Sarah,” who this pain and this truth manifest in pigment. large, the eyes of his portrait subjects engage has an overall blue cast (piquantly accented His paintings, therefore, are possessed of an those of the viewer in a manner that can by the pimento-red pupils of her eyes), and uncommon power. ––Donald Lieberman Angles of Abstraction at Broadway Mall esides being one of New York’s most Pud Houstoun speaks the classic language “Cosmos 9” and “Cosmos 10” seem espe- Bcommitted abstract painters, Meyer of Abstract Expressionism with a new accent cially apt. Tannenbaum is one of the most vociferous in oils on linen notable for their rough ele- Farhana Akhter’s large compositions in supporters of abstract art in general. So gance. While Houstoun’s poetic “Sun acrylic and mixed media are all set on dark although he normally eschews the role of Dance” presents us with a bleached field of grounds lend drama to sinuous calligraphic curator for that of the full-time painter, every fleshy de Kooning pinks enlivened by deli- shapes created with bold strokes of thick year for several years in a row now, he has cate linear traceries scratched and drawn into metallic pigment encrusted with textural been bringing together some of his similarly the surface in the manner of Twombley, her matter, as well as sequins that create a gem- inclined colleagues in the West Side Arts “Night Vigil” is a smaller composition satu- like effect. Akhter’s paintings suggest the Coalition for an exhibition celebrating the rated with darkly brooding hues and preg- phrase “abstract baroque.” ongoing vitality and diversity of nonobjective nant gestures. Those more familiar with Jutta Filippelli’s painting in the postmodern era. Leila Elias, on the other hand, brings new representational paintings will be surprised In “Abstract 2008,” seen recently at vision and tactility to Color Field painting in by the power and freedom of her abstract Broadway Mall Community Center, on the her mixed media overall compositions, in works, composed with jagged shapes that center island at Broadway and 96th Street, which pale yet luminous blue and violet hues hug the picture plane in a manner reminis- two acrylics on canvas from Maryann are washed over an array of textural elements cent of Clyfford Still. Fillipelli’s colors, which Sussoni’s “Fusion” series showed the artist’s such as sandy substances, string, and beans. range from brighter hues through earthy interest in introducing a sense of depth in Elias consistently courts chaos to arrive at a browns, complement her rugged forms. abstract painting. Violating the supposed pleasing sense of unity and beauty. In Meyer Tannenbaum’s new paintings sanctity of the two-dimensional picture plane By contrast, Azmeer Hossain organizes from his “Expansion Series,” line and color is a particularly postmodern preoccupation, space with bold geometric forms in mono- are treated as discreet entities, yet they inter- and Sussoni does so more evocatively than chromatic mixed media works notable for act in intriguing ways. Tannenbaum’s sharp- most, creating forms that suggest cavernous their emblematic boldness and textures edged yet sensual black lines swerve and spaces in a palette dominated by deep blue achieved with collage and grooves carved swirl fluidly, their graceful contours touched and purple hues. into thickly piled pigment. Accomplished here and there by rainbow shapes that create Indeed blues and purples seem popular with only black, white, and gray, subtly a sense of the swarming molecular activity with other artists as well, including Jeanette accented by bits of brown burlap left bare of underlying all life. Arnone-K who works mostly in watercolor paint, Hossain’s compositions invariably Sharing the same wall, Marsha Peruo’s on paper, creating spare calligraphic shapes make a strong formal statement. small, precise geometric abstractions seemed with the swiftness and grace of Western Zen Leanne Martinson’s two oils on paper, to engage in a lively dialogue with the more master. Filled with energy and rhythm, “Cosmos 9” and “Cosmos 10,” are muscu- cursive forms of her neighbor. Peruo’s use of Arnone-K’s exhilaratingly spontaneous com- lar compositions consisting of clotted gestur- ink lines shaded by watercolor and colored positions hint at natural forces and events al forms in bright primary hues on a white pencil lends her compositions a pristine with titles such as “Purple Rain,” “Sunami,” ground. Vigorous strokes connect what beauty. Also including work by Elinore and “Whale Run.” appear to be balls of energy, making the titles Continued on page 37 30 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Chinese Painter Hu Zhiying Makes His Bones With Bacon own through art history it Baconesque visual vocab- Dhas been a common practice ulary of forms, their spe- for artists to pay tribute to other cific sources are not as artists by either deliberately adopt- readily discernible. For ing aspects of each others’ style or Hu Zhiying has subjected copying their works outright the figures in both can- (Manet once borrowed an entire vases to considerably composition from Raphael and more imagistic decon- we’re all familiar with Picasso’s struction than Bacon usu- homages to Rubens and ally did, creating a com- Velazquez.) position that, in fact, In China, where traditional ink appears to reference cer- painters learn the conventions for tain aspects of Julian depicting various elements of Schnabel’s abstractions nature by copying the examples in even while retaining the an instruction primer called The overall compositional Mustard Seed Manual, to copy thrust and mood of another artist’s work is to confer Bacon. on him or her the highest kind of Thus, through his own honor. In the West, however, the painterly articulation, advent of the Appropriation Zhiying gives us an inter- Movement (artists making exact esting insight as to how duplicate of works by other artists Bacon influenced and blatantly exhibiting them as Schnabel in terms of their own) caused considerable form, drama, and show- controversy in the 1980s. manship, if not in subject All of which brings us to the matter. But his own trans- case of Hu Zhiying, a distin- mutations of the British guished contemporary Chinese painter’s imagery are even painter whose powerful series more interesting for their “Remake Bacon,” is on view in his brilliant fluidity, with the exhibition at World Fine Art central figuratively allusive Gallery, 511 West 25th Street, forms metamorphosing from January 2 through 31, 2009 muscularly into sinuous (Reception: January 8, 6 to 8pm.) biomorphic clusters set The exhibition also includes From Hu Zhiying’s “Remake Bacon” series against expanses of fiery red seemingly Abstract large mixed media paintings titled Armed with this information, one can Expressionist brushwork from which dis- “Astronomy” and “Characters,” in which, now look at Hu Zhiying’s “remakes” of torted Baconish faces emerge when one working in a layered postmodern manner another painting by Bacon that the British steps back from the canvas. akin to David Salle, Zhiying superimposes artist based on one of Muybridge’s photo- In this stately triptych, Zhiying pays trib- delicate linear images of tree limbs and graph’s of naked wrestlers (placing them on ute to Bacon while creating something new rocks apparently copied in white paint from a bed to make the image more sexually sug- and quite sensational, just as he does in The Mustard Seed Manual over large semi- gestive) with a less judgmental eye. And in another imaginatively abstracted “remake” abstract landscapes painted in the Western doing so, one may realize that Zhiying of “Painting 1946,” the seminal picture manner. Like ghostly palimpsests, these ves- actually transforms the original image even juxtaposing sides of beef with a sinister tiges of traditional Chinese ink painting more than Bacon did, making both of the mortician-like figure half-hidden under a seem to comment wryly on issues of influ- figures blue rather than flesh-colored and black umbrella with which Bacon made his ence, copying, and the difference between making one of them appear decidedly femi- early reputation (itself an amalgam of how originality is viewed in the East and nine (despite the vigorous expressionist Soutine's bloody Expressionist carcasses and the West. And in doing so, they prime strokes that render both semi-abstract). But the Renaissance master Masaccio’s fresco of one’s mind for this immensely gifted the biggest change of all is the huge image the Trinity). Chinese painter’s highly original take on of a beautiful woman, cropped at the top of With this exhibition at World Fine Art the work of the famous British painter the head and below the breasts, hovering Gallery, Hu Zhiying, who lives in Francis Bacon. behind the two merged bodies. Painted Guangzhou, China, and teaches at the It should be news to no one familiar more realistically, albeit more faintly, she College of Fine Arts of South China with his work that Bacon himself was a suggests the phantom memory of an erotic Normal University, makes a major state- great copier, not only of Eadweard encounter, a haunting vision of love long ment about the multicultural currents of Muybridge’s motion photographs of naked gone. In context, this image is strikingly cross-fertilization of influence, inspiration wrestlers, but of earlier painters as well. His incongruous, since female figures appear and innovation that unite painters of the paintings of screaming popes, after all, only rarely in Bacon’s oeuvre, and are never past, present, and future. With Beijing fast derived directly from postcards of beautiful like this one. becoming one of the major contemporary Velazquez’s famous portrait “Pope In the exhibition, this painting is brack- art capitals of the world, it seems only a Innocent X” that Bacon copied, subjecting eted between two other large canvases to matter of time before he makes his bones as the image to grotesque distortions, trans- form a triptych, a configuration that Bacon an international art star. forming a flattering clerical likeness into an himself often favored. However, while the ––Ed McCormack image of demonic monster. other two canvases also partake of a

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 THE WSWest Side Arts Coalition C 1979 BROOME The Evolving Spirit STREET Dec. 24, 2008 – Jan. 11, 2009 Curator: Margo Mead GALLERY Larry Frank • Leonard Gold Ground floor, 300 sq. ft. Elizabeth K. Hill • Madi Lanier • Margo Mead • 1, Anne Rudder Exhibition space rental et al. available

Broadway Mall Community Center 498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm Tel: (212) 941-0130 [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

Noho Gallery’s Annual Art Auction December 23–January 17 Silent and on-line bidding begins December 23 WSWest Side Arts Coalition C Final bids and live auction at the closing reception, 1979 January 17, 4–6 pm 530 West 25th Street Wayward Pigments 212.367.7063 A fine arts exhibit www.nohogallery.com Mondays–Saturdays, 11–6 December 3-21, 2008 Ludmila Aristova • Arlene Baker • Irving Barrett • Jeanne Butler Rebecca Cooperman • Alexandra Corbin • Jessica Fromm • Anne Kolin Aandra Aabdock • Cecilia Andre • Alexandra Avlonitis Christopher Green • Sheila Hecht • Marilyn Henrion • Bruce Laird Marguerite Borchardt • Leonard Gold • Carolyn Kaplan • Nancy Staub Laughlin • Marla Lipkin • Daniele Marin Michelle Melo • Theresa Rosano • Robert T. Schultheis Pat Feeney Murrell • Siena Porta • Stephanie Rauschenbusch Robert N. Scott • Elisa Van Rhyn Tina Rohrer • Joy Saville • Chuck von Schmidt • Erma Martin Yost Leon Yost • Judy Zeichner Parker • Joan Zuckerberg Broadway Mall Community Center 530 West 25th St., NYC, 10001 Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm 212 367 7063 www.nohogallery.com [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

Gallery Group WSWest Side Arts Coalition C 1979 Through December 12th, 2008 Light and Color Curators: Terry Berchowitz and Anne Rudder George Deem November 12 - 30 January 8th - February 21st, 2009 Catalog available Sonia Barnett • Terry Berkowitz • Arthur Bitterman • Elinore Bucholtz Elizabeth K. Hill • Mikki Powell • Beatrice Rubel • Anne Rudder Patience Sundaresan • Meyer Tannenbaum • Yukako Allan Stone Gallery 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 Broadway Mall Community Center Tel. 212.987.4997 Fax. 212.987.1655 Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm www.allanstonegallery.com [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

32 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Tenderness and Rage in the New Paintings of Anowar Hossain nowar Hossain has come under several artist whose primary interest, in both his fig- tender a tribute as one artist has ever paid to Aimportant influences in his lifetime. As urative and abstract work, had previously another. In it, six images of Frida are seen in a young man growing in Bangladesh, such been more formal than humanistic. positions suggesting two rows of ballerinas figures as the writer Ravindrath Tagore, the Such a creative sea change can energize poised onstage or a group of little girls por- film maker Satyajit Ray, and the musician an artist, and certainly that is true in traying angels in a Christmas pageant. In Ravi Shanker played important roles in his Hossain’s case, since his recent paintings are fact, there is even a loose, painterly hint of intellectual and artistic development. Later, possessed of great vigor and emotional wings curving up over the shoulders of the after coming to the United States figures, and in contrast to the to study at The Art Students strident hues of the previous League and make his way as a two canvases, the entire com- painter, he admired Willem de position is bathed ethereally in Kooning and Arshile Gorky, both soft auras of pink and baby of whom, like himself, came from blue, particularly the back- other countries to make their ground behind the figures, contribution to Abstract which suggests a clear sky inter- Expressionism, the polyglot spersed with puffy white movement that put American clouds. painting on the map. Here, too, each phantom- Often, however, it is the like Frida wears a little smile, as mature enthusiasms that we dis- she rarely seemed to in photos cover when we are too far along or in her numerous self-por- on our own path to be influenced traits, as though she has finally but perhaps more receptive than escaped the suffering that fed ever before to inspiration, that her stark art but starved her end up having the most profound heart, achieving a final tran- influence on our work. scendent bliss denied her in life. “I have always known Frida If Hossain’s portraits of Kahlo and Diego Rivera as ‘sim- Frida’s fellow painter and lover ple artists,’” Hossain said recently, Diego Rivera are not quite as “I never realized the impact their affectionate, they are certainly work had on the lives of many until I visited power. More than ever, form in his paint- as strong, showing the bullish persona that Mexico. I visited the museums and homes ings functions as an extension of content, made the portly muralist, along with where they lived and painted. Visiting making his compositions not only more Orozco and Siqueiros, one of Mexico's Mexican government buildings and offices, immediately accessible but more dynamic in three preeminent social realists. I discovered that art went beyond composi- formal terms as well. This comes across However, some of Hossain’s strongest tion, color, and form. Themes run through especially well in his portrait of Frida Kahlo recent statements are his “War on Oil” their work: the ordinary person, socialism, painted in bold patches of hot, brilliant series, in which he protests governmental national pride, the human spirit. Most of my color more reminiscent of the Fauves (par- misadventure with a passion that would past art icons have been European and ticularly Jawlensky) than of the meticulously surely have pleased Rivera himself. While American art masters. Somehow painters detailed self portraits that constitute much collaged photographic images of soldiers such as Diego and Frida were left out of the of Frida’s own oeuvre, making the distinct and politicians, flags, flag-draped coffins mil- curriculum. How is it that Frida’s portrayal difference between influence and inspiration itary insignia and newspaper headlines of her own personal pain transcends light palpable in pigment. appear here and there in these paintings, and shadow for me at this time in my life?” In another painting, Frida wears a queen- their main thrust is abstract. Yet the artist’s Anowar Hossain’s soul searching and his ly floral patterned turban and is enveloped indignation and rage, expressed in vibrant reflecting on the work of the two Mexican entirely in electric auras of red, blue, ocher colors and violent strokes of the brush, is painters “with love, respect, and passion” and pink. She wears two live tropical parrots made as eloquently explicit as Motherwell’s not only inspired him create a series of on her shoulders as though they were a great series “Elegy to the Spanish paintings called “My Frida and My Diego,” mink stole and her eyes are lowered like Republic.” but also to emulate their example and admit those of fellow artistic sufferer Billy Holiday, Two powerful figurative exceptions are a more personal social concerns into his own when the singer would stand stately and portrait of a boyish soldier posing proudly work and embark on another important ruined and brave at the microphone in some in his uniform next to a scrawled text that series titled “War on Oil,” exploring how smoky bistro. And in yet another portrait in informs us of his death at age 22, and “the leaders of the country start war that softer tones of ocher blue and violet, Frida is another painting of a lone soldier with an has nothing to do with benefiting the aver- seen as sphinx-like presence with the pendu- artificial limb standing, like one of de age person, hiding the truth of their inten- lous Earth Mother breasts, casting her gaze Chirico’s forlorn mannequins, with his back tions.” away from the viewer as though deep in to us, facing the skull-like columned facade Both series can be seen in Hossain’s reverie. Here, too, the addition of collage of some governmental structure, painted Open Studio Exhibition, which will open elements, specifically a patterned cloth sug- predominantly in muted tones of khaki. with a reception on Saturday, November 8, gestive of Mexican textiles, adds further tex- Taken together with his tributes to Frida from 5 to 9 pm, and continue through tural interest, and the likeness that Hossain and Diego, Anowar Hossain’s antiwar series December 12, at L.I.C. Arts Center, 44-02 captures is especially strong, emphasized by seems a brave and fruitful departure for an 23rd Street, in Long Island City. Frida’s distinctive single continuous eyebrow artist at the height of his powers and fully in Although the imagery in each is very dif- and faint feminine mustache. touch with his tenderness and rage. ferent, the two series seem interchangeable But perhaps the most poignant and in spirit, signaling a new awakening in an affecting portrait is one that has to be as ––Ed McCormack

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 33 ART ONLINE Elizabeth Delson (1932-2005): The Rich Legacy of a Working Artist hey are landscapes in my mind, perhaps from being “ almost gaudy,” as she theme of Adam and Eve, and “Exotic Little Tnot immediately evident to all; the col- described them. Painted in oil on paper Jungle,” both with raised, inkless areas that ors are vibrant, almost gaudy,” the painter primed with white gesso that serves as an create ornate frames within the picture and printmaker Elizabeth Delson wrote integral element in the composition, they space for her deftly drawn human and ani- about a series of paintings she was working employ gestural strokes that intertwine like mal figures. on in the Spring of 2002, three years before multicolored flames. Generous areas of Again, but in a different manner, her death. “I wonder how they will fare; it white ground around the clustered strokes Delson’s use of color relief and intaglio is like sending children out into the world, at the center let air into the composition techniques in her “Twelve Tribes of Israel not knowing if they will be seen as ugly and emphasize the calligraphic grace and Suite,” combining monochromatic figures ducklings or elegant swans.” muscular plasticity of the energetically flar- and elements of landscape with red Hebrew Excerpted from a longer ing forms. lettering, results in a tactile richness that journal entry at the begin- Although Delson enhances the series’ symbolic significance, ning of the comprehensive described of them as “land- putting it on a par with the best Judaica website (www.atelierliz.com) scapes in my mind,” these prints of Ben Shahn and Leonard Baskin. that is maintained to keep her paintings appear more con- Along with her ability to invest enduring artistic legacy alive, this brief cerned with the underlying biblical, mythological, and symbolic scenes quote speaks volumes about energies and essences of with contemporary freshness, as seen in her Elizabeth Delson’s devotion nature than with the lay of “Metamorphoses Suite” and “Signs of the to her artistic vocation. the land. And, indeed, some Zodiac” series, Delson was able to impart Over a fifty-one year works in the series, such as monumental qualities to fleeting moments career, which began in earnest “Metamorphosis V: All That of daily life in a series of modest yet superb after her first child was born Jazz” appears decidedly figu- miniature prints endowing romping felines, in 1960 and she gave up her rative, with dancing forms avuncular owls, children at play, reclining work as a textile designer for suggesting the angularly styl- nudes, a slice of pie on a plate, and other fine art, while coping with all ized nudes in Picasso’s “Les humble subjects with a presence recalling the newfound joys and chores Demoiselles d’Avignon,” the ancient Asian masters. of motherhood, Delson sent from the Twelve Tribes of albeit in juicier gestural One especially outstanding example of scores of paintings and prints Israel series strokes and brighter hues Elizabeth Delson’s ability to ennoble an out into the world. Some of more akin to de Kooning. everyday subject is a medium-size color them won prizes in juried exhibitions or These works are a departure from etching in a long, narrow horizontal format found their way into important private and Delson’s earlier Abstract Expressionist oils, called “By the Blue, Blue Sea,” which has public collections, including those of The in which tightly enjambed areas of strong all the grace and beauty of a classical frieze. Brooklyn Museum and Hunter College. but muted color appear to allude to land- Here, several linear nude male and female As a young woman from Plainfield, New scape, still life and figures, their sensually figures printed in sepia ink cavort gracefully Jersey, recently graduated from Smith swelling contours creating dynamic spatial College, Delson enrolled in Pratt Institute, tensions. As she continued to paint, in Brooklyn, where she studied drawing Delson’s forms opened up, unlocked, with Philip Guston and Richard Lindner. became less convoluted, acquiring the ease, Both were strong personalities and most velocity and grace of a mature style. Even likely confirmed her belief in her artistic while remaining true to the innate charac- calling; but neither left a lasting influence teristics of their medium, retaining its pal- on her mature style, which, in her abstract pable physicality and abstract autonomy, her paintings, has an organic energy and a ges- paintings grew closer in spirit to her prints tural strength akin to Abstract for the fluidity of their forms. Expressionism, and in her more figurative Conversely, it would appear that some of prints often reveals an almost Matisse-like her prints simultaneously became more linear fluidity. painterly, in terms of being fully fleshed Much to her credit, from the beginning out, as seen in her color viscosity etching Delson seemed to recognize the distinctly “The Deep,” an undersea marine scene fea- different characteristics of her two medi- turing a large, realistically rendered fish ums, never attempting to merge or synthe- that appears to float outside the rectangle size them for the sake of achieving a super- containing its undersea environment, one ficial stylistic consistency. Someone once of her most accomplished and popular said, “Style is character,” and that alone images. As a printmaker Delson, who had seems sufficient to unite the two aspects of an etching studio and press in the family’s Delson’s creativity under the auspices of her house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was espe- The Neptune’s Garden singular aesthetic sensibility. cially prolific and adventurous. The Print Among her paintings, of which there are Gallery on her site boasts some 306 exam- on a stretch of intricately stippled sand, 83 in the virtual gallery on her website (the ples, mostly etchings, along with litho- while the tide rolls in behind them in sinu- remaining 28 paintings listed in the graphs and serigraphs. She employed a vari- ous blue swirls, orchestrated by Delson in Painting Catalog are in private collections ety of techniques, including aquatint and as memorably watery a manner as unavailable for photographing), the works inkless intaglio to lend her prints tactile Hokusai’s masterpiece “The Great Wave.” that Delson refers to in the aforementioned qualities that are especially appealing in One feels quite comfortable placing journal entry are characteristically vigorous. small yet technically dazzling prints such as Elizabeth Delson in such exhalted company. Their colors are indeed “vibrant,” but far “An Apple a Day,” a witty play on the ––Ed McCormack 34 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Barbara K. Schwartz Celebrates a Grandeur that Endures “ olitics was making me crazy,” Barbara “Cranberry Bogs,” in two smaller works, with a variety of found materials, including PK. Schwartz was saying recently, in her “Legacy I” and “Legacy II,” the effects of stalks of raffia, bits of silk, metal screening, Union Square studio. The artist, whose strip mining, such as the oxidized copper paper scraps, and scatterings of sparkle that 2003 exhibition “Circus Maximus” color of water polluted by toxic wastes and further enliven a terrain built up with layers employed the metaphor of the gladiatorial the cracked aridness of ravaged earth, are of ink, acrylic and oil paint. contests in ancient Rome to reflect on the conjured through the use of secret mixed Conventional art materials alone rarely mindless violence of terrorism and suffice to capture the tactile immedia- the constant warmongering in our cy that Schwartz conveys in her evening news, smiled ruefully, then work, which, in a moment of inspira- added, “I needed some space in my tion, appears receptive to almost eyes and my head, so I decided to anything at hand. One is reminded of celebrate what still remains: the stun- a famous poem by Frank O’Hara, in ning beauty of the land itself.” which he visits the studio of his Thus Schwartz’s latest solo show painter friend Mike Goldberg and “American Places and Spaces,” at notices that one of his abstractions Viridian Artists, Inc., 530 West 25th has sardines in it. But while Street, from October 28 through Goldberg’s sardines were merely November 22, is something of a painted, Schwartz’s mixed media departure and a respite for this wide- work, “Frost in Amagansette” con- ly exhibited and admired artist (who tains three actual sardines! Rather will be interviewed by Christina M. than seeming ridiculous or even the Strassfield, curator of the Guild Hall slightest bit incongruous, they inte- Museum of East Hampton, at the grate auspiciously with tree-trunks gallery on Saturday, November 15, created with real burnt sticks that at 4pm). rhyme visually with trompe l’oeil Yet all the earmarks of her style strokes of black oil crayon in a land- are present in the new work, particu- scape with its own internal logic. larly the novel and innovative use of Such material metaphors and visu- found materials that has always made al similes are part and parcel of her collage paintings so engaging to Schwartz’s singular visual poetry, as encounter. seen in “Where the Waters Meet,” Previewing the show in where a precious jade necklace Schwartz’s studio, one was reminded enlivens a complex marine composi- of some words by Ralph Waldo tion, as well as in “Shining Sea,” yet Emerson that an earlier American another ambitious work inspired by a painter, George Innis, found inspir- line from “America,” in which the ing: “In landscapes the painter shimmering light and rolling rhythms should give a suggestion of a fairer of the brilliant aquamarine and blue creation than we know.” For like sea are conveyed with paint, frag- those of Innis, a remarkably ments of photography, ben-day dots advanced painter for his time, “Where Waters Meet” ala Lichtenstein, and even bits of bro- Schwartz’s new paintings reimagine ken glass from a window shattered the landscape rather than merely copying it. media recipes that the artist refuses to during an attempted bank robbery near the But while Innis was known to rough up divulge. And while Schwartz claims that she artist’s home. the surfaces of his paintings with sticks and has sworn off politics for this exhibition, Another commonplace found material, other unorthodox implements, Schwartz is there is nonetheless a reflexive element of corrugated cardboard, comes prominently more likely to affix foreign objects directly protest in such pieces that belies her resolve. into play and is elevated to new heights in a to the canvas, and, by virtue of her unique (Even while engaging us with tactile surfaces fine art context in a work called “Sequoia.” aesthetic alchemy, to transform them into as sensuously engaging in purely abstract Through deceptively simple means, elements of the landscape. In one new piece terms as those of Antoni Tapes, it would Schwartz employs an installation of three called “Brilliant Morning,” for example, seem that she can’t resist reminding us of separate panels–-two tall and vertical, one pieces of green toile sprinkled with bits of the ecological terrorism we wreak on our smaller and squarer––to simulate the vertig- glitter bring a line of trees alive in a 3-D environment.) inous sensation of standing in a forest look- manner that magically evokes the dewy Conversely, the sense of the grandeur of ing up to the tops of the trees. freshness of the subject. our native landscape as an antidote to the Barbara K. Schwartz has always struck me From a distance, the composition of a dreary political reality of the present day as a quintessentially American artist, express- larger work called “Cranberry Bogs” is asserts itself most emphatically in collage ing the only truly meaningful form of patri- ostensibly abstract, featuring boldly flowing paintings such as “Waves of Grain,” its title otism through the time-honored American organic forms. On closer viewing, however, inspired by the line in the patriotic song tradition of protest and dissent. In this life- one discovers a topography of countless “America” about “amber waves of grain.” affirming new solo exhibition, by showing deep red beads. Here, too, as in earlier anti- The expansiveness of the composition also solidarity with a rugged landscape tradition war paintings peppered with toy soldiers, calls to mind the poetry of Whitman, with pioneered by homegrown American mod- three tiny figurines serve as cranberry pick- all the hope that it still holds out for the ernists such as Arthur Dove and Marsden ers jutting from the densely packed scarlet land, the people who inhabit it, and the Harley, Schwartz reaffirms our faith in what fields, as if glimpsed in an aerial view from a spirit of the country. Here, the big blue sky, is still worth preserving amid all the turmoil passing helicopter or crop-duster. the golden wheat fields, and other elements of an uncertain age. By contrast to the fertile lushness of in the composition are magically conjured ––Ed McCormack NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 35 Form Trumps Poetry in the Paintings of Rosa Tardiu he rose is a loaded subject, so filled with its tight central core to its sensually scal- cal closeup view of a single rose, to gradual- Tliterary and erotic allusions as to make it loped petals; not to mention its many varie- ly, barely perceptively, shift from appearing almost impossible to view as a purely visual gated hues, ranging from the deepest scar- to contract to appearing to expand. The entity. And surely the Spanish painter Rosa lets to the palest pinks and the most velvety result was a vital pulsing effect, evoking the Tardiu, born in 1944 in Barcelona and of whites, as well as the shadows within its natural energy to which the Welsh poet widely exhibited throughout the world, is crevices that impart to this most shapely of Dylan Thomas once referred so memorably aware of them all. flowers its palpable sculptural presence. as “the force that through the green fuse Viewing her recent exhibition of oils on On entering Montserrat Gallery and tak- drives the flower.” canvas, “Playing with Roses,” at Montserrat ing in the exhibition as a whole, what initial- Thus by concentrating solely on varied Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 formal configurations of floral West 27th Street, (where she is forms Tardiu endows them with also included in the year-round more universal suggestiveness than salon) one was reminded of how were she to strive deliberately for Gertrude Stein’s famous admoni- poetic resonance. For in another tion, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” painting, “Tapestry,” while the title warns us how metaphors can might suggest a romantic, decora- blind us to actual things. For tive effect (derived perhaps from Tardiu’s paintings seem very the ornate floral designs of a much concerned with the actuali- medieval weaving) three rows of ty, which is to say the “thingness” four roses create an entirely differ- of her subject. At the same time, ent sense of energy, more akin to however, her images are so iconic the whirling wheels of a surreal as to transcend the specific. Even organic locomotive, suggesting a as she faithfully delineates the metamorphosis from mechanical to whorls that make a rose a rose natural energy. Here, one is and nothing else, she makes us reminded in particular of earlier aware of the romantic qualities paintings exhibited at Montserrat that have inspired poets and other by Tardiu, in which bicycle riders artists down through the centuries and their vehicles took on a similar to immortalize the flower in many dynamism, inspiring another writer mediums. Not the least of these is for this publication to comment on its resemblance to labial folds of “her mastery of the peculiar alche- the female genitalia. my by which shapes assume the It is not for nothing that artists weight of symbols.” such as Judy Chicago made the Indeed, it appears to be one of rose a potent symbol in the femi- Rosa Tardiu’s special gifts to dis- nist art movement of the 1970s, cover multiple metaphysical mean- signifying the power of the ings within the course of her purely Goddess as an answer to many formal explorations, in paintings centuries of phallocentric imagery such as “Contrast,” with its reversal in world art. There is no question of figure-to-ground relationships that Tardiu, being the most within a four-part grid; “Deep Red worldly and sophisticated of Roses,” with its visceral saturations painters, is aware of all of these and shadowy presence; and implications when she picks up “Composition on Gray,” where her brush to further immortalize monochromes take on all the sen- this most evocative and eternal of suousness of color by virtue of the subjects. Because she is cognizant “Degradation” artist’s exquisite sensitivity to tone. of how certain patterns repeat themselves in ly struck one, then, is the number of inno- Indeed, all of her tones, colors, and nature, her paintings cannot help but take vative formal configurations to which Tardiu forms create a symmetry that acts upon the on metaphorical significance, no matter had subjected her subject. By virtue of its viewers’ memory like a template for a host what agenda of objectivity Gertrude Stein imposing physical scale, the most sensational of primal associations lying below the level or anyone else endeavors to impose. Indeed, work was the installation of six large panels of consciousness. Yet such mysteries are for the spiral, the basic configuration of the rose titled “Degradation completo,” one panel of the viewer to grapple with, making of them is, in a larger sense, an ancient symbol which occupied its own wall, while the what he or she will. For as the deceptively reflecting the universal pattern of growth other five spanned the entire length of the simple title of this exhibition indicates, Rosa and evolution, appearing in everything from adjoining one. Tardiu is clearly more concerned with creat- the galaxy to snail shells. But even more impressive than its size ing paintings that function first and fore- Yet at the same time,Tardiu also reflects was the optical effect of the installation most as exquisite objects of aesthetic delec- the words of the American poet William when viewed in toto. For as the eye traveled tation. Carlos Williams whose artistic dictum advo- across the panels from left to right, not only And she succeeds at this so splendidly as cated, “Not in ideas, but in things.” For it is did the tones gradually dim from the palest to suggest that, of all the dictums put forth the sheer physical beauty of the rose, above pinks to the deepest reds, but the subtle by poets over the centuries, the one of and beyond its symbolic significance, that chromatic effect of Tardiu’s skillfully com- which she has taken most serious heed is appears to inspire her: Its complex, coiling bined colors caused the individual composi- Ezra Pound’s famous exhortation, “Make it circularity and intricate convolutions, from tions, each focused on an ostensibly identi- new!” ––Byron Taplinger

36 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS Continued from page 15 combines areas of blazingly brilliant color with drop dead formal boldness. Marion’s flat shapes billow buoyantly, achieving a striking emblematic impact. Two talented stone sculptors also reveal contrasting approaches to abstract form: Raymond Weinstein’s piece in alabaster, “Enigma,” is notable for its sensual organic fluidi- ty, conducting the eye on a roller coaster ride through posi- tive and negative spaces. Ray Shanfeld, however, employs a stately squared off marble shape, suggesting an ancient tablet, balanced upon a smaller slab of marble and carved in a manner evoking a primitive mask, in his evocative piece, “Directions.” Also included will be an intriguing frontal frieze in graphite and ink called “Race”ing Sideways” by guest artist Nikolai Buglaj, depicting thirteen neck-and-neck runners in various monochromatic tones, commenting wryly on our lack of progress in race relations. Judging from even the small sampling of works that were available for preview well in advance of the exhibition, this 90th anniversary edition of the ASCA’s annual exhibi- tion (to be juried by Dede Young, Curator of Contemporary Art, the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York; Dr. Jose Rodeiro, Art Historian at New Jersey City University; and Laura Vookles, Art Curator at the Hudson River Museum), promises to be one of the high- lights of the winter art season. ––J. Sanders Eaton

BROADWAY MALL Continued from page 30 Bucholtz, whose solo show is reviewed at length elsewhere in this issue, “Abstract 2008” reaffirms that nonobjective art is still alive and thriving in the postmodern era. ––Marie R. Pagano

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NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 37 Michelle Sakhai’s Postmodern Approach to Impressionism aving earned her BFA degree with at hand, of its particular qualities of light, ponent of Sakhai’s oeuvre achieves its apex Hhigh honors from Hofstra University, color, and atmosphere. in the intimate oil titled “In the Fog,” where she majored in Art History with a In this regard, she seems a latter-day kin where her use of soft, pale colors captures minor in Fine Arts, and also studied in of the Anglo-French Impressionist Alfred exquisitely the hazy atmosphere of sunlight Spain and France, Michelle Sakhai is obvi- Sisley, not only for her seemingly total devo- burning through fog. A comparable delica- ously well versed in both the history and tion to landscape as a subject, but for the cy, albeit modified by a warmer pinkish techniques of Impressionism. At the same gentle harmonic sensitivity that she brings glow, can be seen in another “Almost time, her work measures up favorably along- Sundown,” where similarly soft hues illumi- side more contemporary artists such as nate a stunningly spare composition consist- Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, and Neil ing mainly of expanses sky and a water sepa- Welliver, who were peers and compatriots of rated by a distant horizon line. The limpid, the New York School but resisted the trend almost heavenly peacefulness of this scene to abstraction––or at very least preferred to suggests that Sakhai, as was once said of embed abstract qualities within a realist con- Sisley, “dreams in paint.” text. But Sakhai can also pump up the chro- As Sakhai revealed in her recent exhibi- matic volume when she wishes to in compo- tion at Montserrat Contemporary Art, 547 sitions such as “Cherry Blossom,” where a West 27th Street (where her work is also on tree ablaze with brilliant pink blossoms and view in the year-round salon exhibition), it the surrounding verdant foliage, flecked with is her direct response to the world around yellow sunlight, turn a park in Long Island her that lends her plein air landscapes their “Cherry Blossom” into a shimmering vision reminiscent of unique immediacy. And her world of sub- to her compositions. For like that Sisley, Monet’s garden at Giverny. Here, too, one jects is indeed wide, ranging from France who along with Renoir and Monet, sees to particular advantage how Sakhai’s and Italy to Panama and Lugana Beach, belonged to the original nucleus of the short, staccato brushstrokes unify, animate, California, as well as more local sites such as Impressionist group, Sakhai seems to favor and add robustness to her paintings. Brooklyn, Queens and Port Washington, pale yet luminous hues for many of her oils By contrast, when she lays down more New York. on canvas. bravura strokes in thick impasto, Michelle Whether near of far, each site that Sakhai “The Port of Nice,” a light-filled French Sakhai’s coloristic intensity and gestural paints is imbued with a specific sense of landscape, and “View from Williamsburg,” vivacity can approach that of the Fauves and place and also brought alive by a single- in which we are made to see fresh poetry in the Expressionists, suggesting a virtuosity to minded dedication to capturing eternal veri- the familiar bridge and bay, are especially match her exhilarating enrapturement with ties, based on close observation of the scene exemplary in this regard. The poetic com- nature. ––Marie R. Pagano Elsa Alejandro’s Infinitely Inventive “Mirages” ike those superb boxers who dazzle their subjecting her fellow Spaniard’s composition much of Lopponents with their footwork, feint, to the radical postmodern reshuffling that Alejandro’s dance, tie them up in a clinch, then throw invests all of her work with its winning imagery is so punishing combinations of punches from combination of painterly refinement and simultaneously every angle, (or, as Muhammad Ali famous- raw vitality. allusive and elu- ly put it “float like a butterfly, sting like a In another more complex work whose sive as to remind bee”), the Spanish artist and art professor Spanish title her New York art dealer of sev- one of those Elsa Alejandro, who lives and works in the enteen years Roland Sainz translated for me lines in the Canary Islands, is an aesthetic athlete, a as “Girl, Tray, and Painting,” a comely seat- poems of John remarkably agile painter. Which is to say: no ed female nude spans an irregularly shaped Ashbery that effect seemed beyond Alejandro’s flashy vir- assemblage of connected canvas shopping resonate pro- tuosity, in her highly engaging recent solo bags. Completing the configuration is a foundly in “Oil painting by Elsa Alejandro” exhibition at Jadite Galleries, 413 West 50th serving tray to which a miniature original remote recesses Street, its very title, “Mirages,” suggesting painting within the painting is attached, of memory without surrendering specific the slippery imagistic bobbing and weaving along with two yellow plastic liquid soap meaning. A perfect example is “The Visit of that makes her work so engaging. containers, the actual household products the Country Girl,” where the ostensibly pri- Her visual wit captures us immediately in trumping trompe-l’oeil illusionism to, as mary portrait subject is upstaged by remark- a portrait that could appear to be based on Robert Rauschenberg once put it, “act in ably resonant background detail: a meticu- Velasquez’s “Maria of Austria”––only, to the gap between life and art.” lous depiction of a space station superim- complement her 17th century high lace col- Alejandro also likes to play on the margin posed on a gossamer windblown window- lar, the regal sitter has an old-fashioned between painterly romanticism and post- curtain, wafting an entire universe of inex- black telephone receiver propped on her Pop cultural referencing, as in her painting plicable mystery into the picture. head like a crown, its curly cord dangling with a title that translates as “The Girl from In other “Mirages,” Elsa Alejandro paints down, a rotary dial circling one eye like a the Pearl,” in which the likeness is such that on needlepoint forms as though they were monocle. the viewer is not quite certain whether it is canvases, or imaginatively recycles plastic Alejandro again pays tribute to Velasquez the actual portrait by Vermeer that is being cups, place mats, reversed canvases with the in a large mixed work, apparently based on referred to or the film starring Scarlett stretcher bars showing, plastic containers his “The Infanta Margarita of Austria, Johanson. One suspects, however, that dangling from strings and spilling onto the Afterwards Empress,” that suggests she has Alejandro intends for us to overlap them gallery floor, and other ordinary detritus to spent many profitable hours in The Prado, mentally, as I did, and thus be reminded of accomplish her peculiarly appealing aesthetic studying his masterly brushwork. Yet she how such simultaneity has become an alchemy. dares to go beyond mere appropriation, inescapable aspect of modern life. Indeed, ––Ed McCormack 38 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 Against Interpretation: The New Paintings of Jessica Fromm ood news: Jessica Fromm is becoming the vertical line or bar. distinctions. Geven more herself. Unlike her predecessor Barnett Such sensually pleasing subtleties must Being an artist who identifies completely Newman, who attributed to his famous evolve in part out of the immediacy of with her work, however, Fromm gives all stripe paintings elements of “the sublime,” Fromm’s process, since unlike most other the credit to the paintings themselves, as or Mark Rothko who expected the viewer of painters who work within the constraints of though they are autonomous entities pos- his stark and somber canvases to have the conceptually predetermined reductivist for- sessed of free will, telling us in an artist’s same “religious experience” that he had mats, she asserts that she does not “plan or statement issued in connection with her new while painting them, Fromm makes no measure, encouraging instinct to guide my exhibition, “In prior shows I have named supernatural claims for her work. Yet for the hand, which means that I am constantly my paintings; responding to the some had provi- developing work in a sional titles, terms largely un-conscious of endearment I or pre-conscious whispered to way.” them while work- Even while adher- ing. Other names ing to an overall came after more orderliness of design, effort. Surveying here, as in her previ- this body of work, ous, less schematic I have found that abstractions, Fromm each painting is so eschews the measured emphatically itself and mechanical line and stands com- in favor of what she plete without a calls “the suggestion name. So I have of a straight line,” dispensed with which is actually hand unnecessary titles drawn, in order to and instead assign keep, as she puts it, arbitrary designa- “myself and my view- tions as refer- ers in the present.” ences.” In paintings such Part of being as “009,” in which herself for Fromm the variously colored means resisting bars gradually grow the pressure to dimmer as the eye attribute “mean- moves across the can- ing” to her paint- vas from left to right, ings, a once per- “009” and “015,” where fectly respectable some of the bars lean position for an abstract artist that has self-imposed severity of her formal vocabu- inward on a bias to touch the others near become increasingly rare in the postmodern lary she has become a kindred spirit of both the edge of the oval canvas, Fromm’s explo- era. One might almost say she is crankily of these towering figures who, while allied rations of the painted line expressively sub- adamant on this point, telling us in the same with Abstract Expressionism under the gen- vert the rational structure of her composi- artist’s statement, “I paint with no specific eral banner of The New York School, tions in excitingly unexpected ways. Thus, image or end point in mind,” and that “the eschewed the automatism of so-called for all her formal awareness and intent, her conscious element of my effort” is concen- “action painting” and were already actively paintings are imbued with an emotional res- trated toward “purely formal matters.” engaged in initiating the as-yet-unnamed onance which she herself obviously recog- In a time when we have become increas- Color Field movement. At the same time, nizes when she states that she regards each ingly conditioned by the current state of the within the stringent context of her predeter- canvas as “a visual poem.” Simultaneously, art to expect paintings to entertain us in one mined format, Fromm also partakes of in purely formal terms, Fromm’s new paint- way or another–– through ironic schtick, painterly felicities akin to the more gestural ings are important not only because they lascivious content, or some other showy arm of Abstract Expressionism, of which she make spare, set, abstract elements remark- antics; when “seriousness,” along with hon- was once a latter-day adherent. ably expressive, but because they make est passion for paint itself, can seem to be In fact, up close, her canvases can still be color, light, and texture inseparable. among the last taboos, this could seem a downright rapturous for the nuances of her In a previous series aptly titled forbidding, even humorless, stance. paint handling: for the sumptuousness of “Confounding Expectations,” exhibited lit- Then one encounters the paintings in her surfaces, achieved in the old way with tle over a year ago in the same venue, Jessica Jessica Fromm’s new exhibition, “Linear oils rather than acrylics, as well as for the Fromm first endeavored, successfully, to Visions,” at Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th chromatic frisson she creates by scumbling subvert “very vertical, parallel, orderly Street from November 25 through one exquisitely harmonized color over imagery familiar in recent art history.” In December 20, and through the sensuous- another. In certain paintings–– such as the the present exhibition, she takes this idea ness of their surfaces and the muted beauty feast of various reds that she designates as even further, making such imagery more her of their color harmonies, one rediscovers an “008” and “018,” a darkly glowing compo- own by virtue of having become more her- old and enduring joy. For the pleasures of sition in a tall, narrow format–– she even self, as every good artist invariably does with Fromm’s recent work are various and com- allows the freely brushed color areas to each passing year. plex, although seemingly centered on the overshadow and even partially obliterate her simplest and sparest of formal components: vertical bars, blurring all figure-to-ground ––Ed McCormack NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO 39 Sophia Albu Ionita (1933-2004): Heavenly Visions Realized in a Unique Medium hen she met with her untimely death Persian miniatures, Egyptian and Blake. Around the bird within the circle on Win November 28, 2004, Sophia Albu Mesopotamian enamels, Celtic patterns and the cruciform on her composition, “The Ionita was at the height of her artistic pow- the art of numerous other diverse ancient Cross,” for example, Ionita inscribed ers. Born and educated in Romania, she cultures. Boudet’s lines (written especially for it): “To later lived for a time in Paris, France, where At the same time, her almost Picasso- draw the wave’s circles / where the bird she discovered her vocation as a visual artist esque figurative distortions (particularly, the sings the mark / and its hit heart Irascible / and won initial acclaim for her work in both visual juggling and doubling of certain fea- the cross has in quarters cut / the plan of her tapestry and the unusual medium of the things that / no look pyrogravure (burning images into wood). will ever join but / the After coming to live in the United States, eye ready not to be where she taught French and Drama to safe”. high school students in New Jersey, she But she quotes other steadily amassed a reputation for her work in poets as well, including both tapestry and pyrogravure which she Pascal in “Birds as Proof made uniquely her own by the addition of of God.” Birds, those colors as luminous as stained glass to the lin- heavenly messengers, ear compositions that she burned into appear frequently in her wooden panels. work, woven symbolical- Although “pyrogravure colorée,” as the ly, as in her other medi- French refer to it, is a little known in the um, tapestry, into the United States, it is widely appreciated in very fabric of her pyro- France and other parts of Europe, where it gravure coloree composi- has been employed for many centuries in tions as recurring ele- church decoration. The manner in which ments of the personal Ionita updated the medium, making it the iconography that she vehicle for her personal vision, can be seen nourished with her wide- in her solo exhibition at Montserrat ranging intellectual and Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27th philosophical interests. Street, in Chelsea, from November 25th In writing about her through December 13th, with a reception in memorium, her friend on Friday November 28th, from 6 to 8pm. and fellow pyroengraver (Her work is also included in the gallery’s Kathleen Menendez year-round Salon exhibition.) recalled, “As I got to Often Ionita used unusual objects as her know Sophia in 1997, canvases, such as doors, and in one case the she told me about her lid of a harpsichord, as in the composition favorite book. She called “Jesus Joy of Man’s Desiring,” where referred to it as her ‘livre the elegant, graceful shape of the instru- de chevet,’ a French ment’s lid, as well as the allusion it evokes to expression referring to a transcendent liturgical music, creates an book that she always especially striking context for Ionita’s flow- kept on her nightstand ing imagery of stylized faces, fanciful birds, because it meant so floral shapes, and flowing semi-abstract much to her. What forms. Boethius wrote back in The works on doors, as seen at the Fifth Century A.D. Montserrat, are especially stately, given their called ‘The Consolation vertical shape and the manner in which of Philosophy’ inspired Ionita integrated the geometry of the panels both her philosophy of with the intricate products of her fertile life and her art.” imagination. Titles as “Door to Heaven,” “The Last Hour (No. 2)” In the work of Sophia and “Transcendence,” and “Cross” suggest tures to show a single face from different Albu Ionita, affectionate portraits of family how her personal imagery was often inspired angles simultaneously that we see in works and friends mingled freely with images of by Christian iconography of a particularly such as her “Self-Portrait, Autumn 1997,” angelic beings and magical realms. bent. Indeed, the great expressive power of and “Triple Self-Portrait”), as well as the “She thinks a lot about, and meeting up the compositions, with their figures seen in geometric shapes, fractured planes and frag- there one day with some of the world’s shallow rather than realistic space, as though mented imagery in her dynamic composi- finest composers is part of how she pictures occupying the spiritual plane rather than an tion “The Last Hour,” place Ionita’s work (her) heaven will be,” wrote Menendez, earthly dimension, are possessed of a glow- securely within the modernist tradition. while her friend was still alive, in a text that ing grandeur and supernatural coloristic Some compositions incorporate pyroen- takes on even more poignant meaning sumptuousness normally seen only in the graved quotations from the French poet posthumously. great periods of religious painting. Eric Boudet, a friend with whom Ionita Given the heartfelt beauty of her work, However, her work finally transcends often collaborated, marrying visual and ver- one likes to imagine that Sophia Albu Ionita denominational limitations, achieving a uni- bal art in the manner of Larry Rivers and was welcomed there with open arms. versal sense of spirituality that calls to mind Frank O’Hara, albeit with a visionary, meta- the ornate designs of Buddhist murals, physical intensity more akin to William ––Peter Wiley

40 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 James Eugene Albert

“Squeeze“ 25x20 Iris Print November 4-29, 2008 Reception: November 13, 6-8pm WORLD FINE ART GALLERY 511 West 25th Street, Ste 803, New York, N.Y. 10001 Phone: 646 336 1677 Hrs: Tues - Sat 12 - 6pm www.worldfineart.com [email protected]

ANGEL URANGA Spanish Painter

January 16 - 30, 2009

Reception: Friday, January 16, 6 - 8 pm

GROUP SHOW OF GALLERY ARTISTS November 7 - 21 Enrique Cubillas, Monica Agudelo, Dennis Rano, Agustin Ochoa, Anki King, Paula Proganizky, Luisa L. Celada

GROUP SHOW Cuban artists from Miami and New York Fundraising Auction to benefit the Cuban Cultural Center of New York December 5 - 19 Reception: Friday, December 5, 6 -8pm SUTTON ART GALLERY 407 East 54th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 Tel. 212 753 0884 Cell 917 544 6846 Tues - Fri 11am - 6pm Sat 11am - 5pm [email protected]

NOV/DEC 2008-JAN 2009 GALLERY&STUDIO Dorothy A. Culpepper

“Agitate #1”

“Agitate #2” represented by

CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY 547 WEST 27TH STREET NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10001 PH. 212.268.0088 FAX 212.274.1717 WWW.MONTSERRATGALLERY.COM