Revolutionizing Ink Art at the Met Pg

February/March 2014 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com Vol. 16 No. 3 New York GALLERY&STUDIO

Revolutionizing Ink Art at the Met pg. 6

Zhang Huan, Chinese, born 1965 Family Tree 2001 Nine chromogenic prints Sheet (each): 21 × 16½ in. (53.3 × 41.9 cm) Lent by The Walther Collection Photo: © Yale University Art Gallery 530 West 25th Street, New York Tel: 212-226-4151 www.Agora-Gallery.com [email protected]

ੂ A portion of the proceeds from the sales of work in these exhibitions will be donated to the Children’s Heart Foundation, which brings health, hope, and happiness to children impacted by congenital heart defects.

(from top to bottom) Mary Dutra Opposite View II Mixed Media on Canvas 23.5” x 31.5” STAM Clouds over People Mixed Media on Paper 22” x 27” Luca Viapiana Untitled 2 Oil, Acrylic, & Mixed Media on Canvas 47” x 31.5” Soo Hong Garden 1 Acrylic & Charcoal on Linen 59” x 39.5”

GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Ed Brodkin Bounces Back Stronger Than Ever

“Sing the Long Pond Beautiful” ithout invading a very private man’s below create the reflective flow of water on the fallout from a nuclear explosion, with a Wprivacy too intrusively (one knew him the lake. Like the graceful trunks of the three toxic-looking mass of pigment poured above for several years without learning that he was slender trees and their bare branches in the a desolate terrain. The sense of apocalyptic awarded a Purple Heart for his service in foreground, the hills on the opposite shore upheaval in the picture makes a mockery W.W.II ), it seems relevant to mention that are delineated by strong yet precise strokes of of the future U.S. president’s ecological after going through a long period of personal red acrylic over yet other intricate patterns of dimwittedness. grief following the death of his long time colored paper. The wanton disregard for nature endemic wife and fellow painter Kiki Brodkin, a sense Characteristically of Brodkin’s work, the to our industrialized landscape is also tackled of renewal has entered into the work of Ed immediacy of a specific sense of place is forcefully by the activist artist in his work in Brodkin that was everywhere evident in his achieved more vividly through semiabstract acrylic and collage on waferboard, “Millstone most recent solo exhibition in Chelsea. means than would be possible within the Valley.” Here, Brodkin takes a saw to the This feeling comes across with special limitations imposed by traditional realism. surface of the composition to evoke an area vibrancy in Brodkin’s panoramic landscape, Indeed, Brodkin’s paintings often engage in a of the country where the tops of mountains “Sing the Long Pond Beautiful.” The dialogue with art historical sources, as well as are sheared off for mining, and the wreckage Whitmanesque title alludes to Greenwood with whatever in contemporary art happens is left to litter the valley. A big bold area of Lake, a nine mile long natural body of water to catch his fancy. verdant green defaced by tarry black streaks bisected by the New York State and New “Well Met,” a work in acrylics and with jaggedly sawed edges is juxtaposed with Jersey State border line, once known by the collage on burlap and wafer board, for an equally bold area of visceral red, accented Lenni Lenape native American people of the example, references Sigmar Polk’s use of by delicate, weedlike twigs, in a rough, Delaware Nation as the “long pond.” various patterned fabrics in his paintings. irregularly shaped composition, suggesting On encountering this glowing visual In Brodkin’s painting, a linear architectural the violent rape of the virgin land. interpretation of a site that has great personal rendering of the type of massive wooden Neo-Cubistic patches of earthy color, meaning, past and present, for the artist, even portal seen in official public meeting halls along with subdued green and orange hues, one not often given to quoting Wordsworth where civic and political issues are debated and strategically interspersed dark, shadowy is put in mind of that poet theologian’s dominates the center of the composition. All areas, make up the formal armature for moving lines: “Though nothing can bring around it, on a field of homey floral patterns “Oak Bluffs Home.” In this image of an old back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of awash in a field of golden ocher, float reverse- house with a big wraparound porch, one glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather silhouettes of ornate chairs from several can sense, almost visualize, the ghosts of the find / Strength in what remains behind; In different periods –– as though tossed aside many lives its rooms have sheltered over the the primal sympathy/ Which having been in the aftermath of negotiations in which generations; the decades of birth and death, must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that nothing whatever was settled! joy and sorrow. For the dwelling itself has a spring / Out of human suffering; / In the One might say that “Well Met” is Ed phantasmal quality; its dark windows suggest faith that looks through death, / In years that Brodkin’s biting commentary on the long- empty eye-sockets, its porch-rails, the bony bring the philosophic mind.” winded but slow-moving pace of positive teeth in the broad grin of a skull. Newfound hope and joy in living, change. Although there is almost always a tempered by the lingering nuance of In yet another recent painting, “A Tree’s a conceptual trigger for Ed Brodkin’s paintings melancholy that never completely dissipates Tree,” Brodkin comments just as trenchantly –– an idea or concern that spurs his creativity in those who have suffered profound loss, on political buffoonery. The title is a quote –– the purely painterly pleasures of color, permeate this vision in collage and acrylic uttered by Ronald Reagan in 1981, when texture, and form in his work are many. on Clayboard. For here, Brodkin, a virtuoso he opposed expansion of Redwood National Witness “Warriors,” a dynamic composition at achieving special effects with unusual Park with the inane claim that “Trees cause Continued on page 23 materials, employs fragments of subtly more pollution than automobiles do.” The colored paper to achieve a luminosity akin then governor of California went on to add, Ed Brodkin, recently seen at Pleiades Gallery, to stained glass, within beam-like stripes that “A tree’s a tree. How many more do you 530 West 25th Street. Brodkin Studio: create an atmospheric sense of light seeping need to look at?” 551-804-1833 [email protected] through a somewhat moody morning sky. Brodkin’s vigorous gestural composition www.gallerynow.com/brodkin Other fragments of paper mosaic down suggests something between a tree and edbrodkin.newyorkartists.net

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 1 Flora Jacobson’s Insouciant Mixed Media Alchemy he scarcity of exhibition venues for use of gold Tall but the most well known artists and silver in this real estate capital of the world has pigments given birth to all manner of imaginative also adds G S alternative spaces outside the confines an ironic & of the usual gallery scene. One recent element of solo shows in one of the liveliest of such Christian Highlights environments was that of Flora Jacobson, iconography at an upscale unisex salon called Alice Hair. to the Here, as disco beats thumped from image, in unseen speakers, one went through all keeping with sorts of contortions, practically amounting its title. Another standout is “The Artist,” On the Cover: to an aerobic workout, to take notes on a work in ink and watercolor in which the Jacobson’s small, often intricate, mixed composition moves smoothly between the Chinese Ink Art media compositions without colliding with figurative and the abstract, with the female in the postmodern era. the lithe and amiable fashionistas snipping, figure, perhaps a symbolic self-portrait, –Page 6 combing, and blow-drying their clients merging with shattered cubist planes in in the narrow aisles nearby. Somehow, a manner that lends the image a layered the youthful, improvisatory energy of ambiguity. Although the specificity of the Ed McCormack remembers Jacobson’s gemlike works appeared right figure anchors the composition in formal at home on the other side of the looking stasis, the surrounding colors and shapes his lost friend Lou Reed. glass at Alice Hair, just as the social realist appear to metamorphose before one’s gaze –centerfold paintings of her famously iconoclastic from abstract paintings in a studio to an (To read the latest excerpt of teacher at The Art Student League, Robert outer hallway where checkered patterns Cenedella, do in the elegant bohemian suggest a tiled floor and thick vertical lines Ed McCormack’s memoir, google Lou and society saloons he still favors over most evoke the wooden spokes and bannister of Reed Ed McCormack Vanity Fair) galleries and museums. a staircase. In stylistic terms, Jacobson’s pictures Jacobson’s Steinbergian kinship can be occupy a space somewhere between the seen not only in her reliance on a flowing fanciful miniatures of Paul Klee, the wildly line, interspersed with spare areas of inventive drawings of the great New unmodulated color, to carry most of her Yorker draftsman Saul Steinberg, and such compositions, but also in her sly visual wit. Is your art website graphic masters of Art Nouveau as Gustav It comes across with particular piquancy in Klimt and Egon Schiele. Her kinship with “Alice at Tully Hall,” her profile of a regal getting lost in cyberspace? the latter two artists is especially apparent dowager in pearls, and a boldly patterned Contact in both “Shades of Brown,” a work in pen turban and dress ensconced on a sofa and watercolor featuring a stately, stylized in a theater lobby at intermission time. GALLERY&STUDIO female figure in an elegant striped dress Another tour de force by Jacobson, a little at [email protected] surrounded by intricate geometric patterns; like Kurt Schwitters’s “Merz” collages, is to find out how to attract the as well as in “The Power of Thought,” a “Secretary,” in which a simple pen and ink pen, ink, and collage vision of a meditative sketch of a young woman dressed for attention of collectors, curators, figure in a cluttered neo-Nabi interior. Continued on page 23 critics, and others who should know Jacobson’s contemporary take on about your work. the formal vocabulary of Art Nouveau Flora Jacobson’s “Meditative Thoughts” also enlivens her ornate mixed media recently seen at Alice Hair, composition “The Cardinal,” where her 1324 Second Avenue.

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2 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Basha Maryanska: A Poetic Solo Show at the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences lthough the term is employed ranging from silvery blues to vibrant orange projects a topsy-turvy metaphysical effect Apromiscuously in contemporary critical and yellow hues, which capture the Christmas with a mirror-like rectangle at the center of discourse, precious few painters can be tree twinkle of the scene’s many lighted the composition. Within it is a luminous accurately called “visual poets.” One was windows in buildings both large and small. lunar orb, shadowed by bare silhouetted the Chinese-American watercolorist Dong Another city scene in the show, “Energy tree limbs, and other trees upside down, Kingman, who was not only represented of Times Square,” is a magical view of that as though reflected in the waters of an icy in the Museum of Modern Art, The much visited thoroughfare that goes far nocturnal lake. In fact, the setting seems to Metropolitan Museum of Art, and beyond the garish banality to which it is often be a place like Central Park after a winter numerous other prestigious venues that subjected by artists catering to the tourist storm, with semi-translucent neo-cubistic lent official credibility to his reputation as trade. With festive colors, fanciful forms, snow drifts surrounding a body of blue water an innovative modernist, but and the lights of apartment garnered a popular following buildings glowing in the middle in the 1950s to rival that distance. “Adagio,” as its title of Norman Rockwell and suggests, is one of this visual Andrew Wyeth. Another was poet’s most moodily compelling Loren MacIver, who made pictures, with its atmosphere at her debut in the exhibition once somber and beautiful. “Fourteen Americans” at the Yet another unabashedly Museum of American Art,” atmospheric, aesthetically which purchased her 1940 oil appealing, work –– itself a “Hopscotch,” and went on courageous thing to attempt, to paint other glowing urban in a century that all too often visions and gain a formidable art glorifies ugliness as a necessary world following. component of “serious” artistic Although Kingman and expression –– is the much MacIver also painted occasional larger acrylic on canvas that landscapes and other nature the artist calls “Connected.” subjects, they both became Here the massive rusted gold known primarily as poets of the shore-anchorages that support city, the former for bustling yet the cables of a bridge carry the oddly melancholy scenes such as viewer’s gaze across a river to “Mott Street,” 1953; the latter the skyline of a city that appears for atmospheric tours de force as if carved in crystal. Its towers like “Taxi,” 1952. and spires rise triumphantly, Among living artists today, majestically, against a sky that few possess the gift to capture at first glance appears gray and the particular tempo and magic overcast, yet on closer scrutiny, of the city as poetically as “Adagio” reveals a panoply of subtle pink Basha Maryanska, in her solo tonalities. exhibition at the Polish Institute of Arts and a composition fully as engaging in Maryanska’s skills as a consummate colorist and Sciences. purely formal terms as a work by Paul Klee, also come across in “ Blue New York,” Maryanska earned her MFA at the Maryanska paints “The Great White Way,” another large acrylic on canvas, depicting Academy of Fine Arts at Gdansk in her as it is sometimes known for its glittering the New York skyline on the horizon in native Poland and studied at the Ecole de array of lights, billboards, and theater facades, the middle distance, with some buildings Louvre in Paris before settling in the U.S. predominantly in subtle shades of blue. shrouded in shadow while the taller towers and establishing an international reputation The buildings are rendered in a simplified glow with sunlight. Here again, the city as both an artist and a curator. She embraced semiabstract manner, as are the towering takes on the quality of an enchanted realm, New York City as an inspiration for many of billboards with ads for “The Lion King,” suspended between a spacious sky and the her paintings, one of which in the present and other commercial theatrical productions, waters of the river, both luminously specked show, presumably painted after a trip abroad, now replaced by lyrical abstractions in with delicate tones of purple and blue. is titled “Welcome Home.” bright shades of pink orange and green, Like the aforementioned Dong Kingman It depicts a view of buildings, ranging from depicting gracefully swirling shapes that call and Loren MacIver, Basha Maryanska is a the brownstone tenements at the bottom of to mind paintings by Picasso or de Kooning. visual poet of the first rank. This exhibition the composition to the glass and steel towers Pedestrians, cars, and taxicabs down below is a must-see for anyone who has all but striving skyward at the top of the picture are reduced to lively specks of bright primary given up on finding the serenity and spiritual space. There is no illusion of traditional hues that, for all their swiftly dashed brevity, solace of a well-constructed sonnet in the perspective; all the structures are arranged evoke the swarming energy of the legendary raucous, often violent gladiatorial arena of on the two dimensions of the picture plane boulevard that has been alternately dubbed contemporary painting. in the modernist manner. Yet, despite the “The Center of the Universe” and “The –– J. Sanders Eaton semiabstract style of the painting –– indeed, Devil’s Playground” and been celebrated by even aided by the composition’s strong writers ranging from Damon Runyon and formal attributes –– the magic of a fairy tale A.J. Leibling to Jack Kerouac and Samuel R. Basha Maryanska, Polish Institute of Arts realm of spires, steeples, and gables is evoked. Delany, among countless others. and Sciences, 208 East 30th St., It is also enhanced by virtue of the chromatic In another manner, Maryanska’s “Adagio” through February 18, 2014 beauty that the artist creates with a palette is a semiabstract mixed media cityscape that

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 Lynne Friedman’s “Shape Shifting” n a conversation that I once had with him forms of a newly industrialized America that “Maroc Diptych,” a large oil on panels with Iin Springs, East Hampton, Willem de fascinated the earlier painter, for her present a composition at once intricate in its multiple Kooning stated in no uncertain terms, “All series Friedman finds inspiration in the terra patterns and emblematic in its overall impact. abstract painting comes from landscape.” cotta, Moorish tiles, mosaics, and timeless Equally dynamic in another manner are her I might have asked if he meant geometric architecture of Spain and Morocco. somewhat smaller oils such as “Kasbah” abstraction, as well as the kind of gestural “My work is about shape shifting, loosely and “The Souk,” in which more prominent Abstract Expressionism he was famous for, based upon the Navaho idea of one physical architectural allusions appear. “Williamsburg but didn’t want to be so crass as to contradict presence magically transforming into Elevation,” another impressive oil inspired by that by then elderly master, whose wife had another,” she says, a metamorphosis which a less exotic locale, appears to pay tribute to told me that not long before, as they watched she expresses through her use of tilted both her Precisionist ancestors and the dark a film on an airplane, he had girder-like converging strokes of said, “This movie stinks, Franz Kline. Elaine, let’s get out of Similarly converging diagonals here!” also animate “Constructiva,” That conversation came an oil on panel in which literally to mind when Lynne represented rust-colored girders Friedman, a painter once figure prominently, set against a known for realist landscapes pale blue sky and gray concrete invariably informed by a towers. Then there are “Mad strong sense of underlying Ave II,” where starkly simplified abstraction, stated, “My sandy-hued old fashioned work has evolved into an skyscrapers soar heavenward, interest in man made and shadowed on one side, buttered architectural structures by sunlight on the other, verging on geometric “Maroc Diptych,” 30 x 60, oil on panels against the softer contours of abstraction .” cottony clouds. By contrast, in a In fact, ever since one first became aware of grids and overlapping angles that lend her watercolor titled “Night Life II,” shadowy it over twenty years ago, different aspects of geometric shapes saturated with pulsing color nocturnal atmospheres and city lights abstraction have been present in Friedman’s a vertiginous effect. dissolve solid forms in skillfully summoned work, ranging from the energetic echoes of Friedman’s interest in the spirituality chiaroscuro. Abstract Expressionism in the gestural force of the Native American cultures of New This splendid solo exhibition marks a of her waterfall series, through the bold Mexico has also inspired her to go beyond dramatic but entirely consistent turning point formal treatment of clouds and mountains making painting what she calls “a window in the career of Lynne Friedman, in that the and heightened hues of her New Mexico on the world,” in much the same way that abstract armature which long supported her landscapes of a few years later. But the change Kandinsky and his fellow abstract pioneers pictorial sensibility has simply come to the in Friedman’s newest solo exhibition “Shape were moved by the popularity of Theosophy forefront. One could call it a most auspicious Shifting” is the most radical and dramatic to and other esoteric belief systems popular at case of shape shifting. date. the turn of their century to look inward. Yet ––––Ed McCormack Painted in oil on canvas and panel and her new work also possesses all the strong watercolor on Arches, her new compositions formal attributes (most particularly in relation forego the bravura brushwork of her earlier to the sanctity of the two-dimensional picture landscapes for a meticulously smooth surface, plane) by which advanced modern painting Lynne Friedman, Artifact, reminiscent of the Precisionism of Charles came to be defined. 84 Orchard Street, March 5 - 23, 2014. Sheeler. But rather than the mechanical One of the most striking examples is

4 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Teona Titvinidze-Kapon: Visions of a Dreamer f Botticelli had painted his innocent young girl’s daydreams. Ifamous Venus from behind, By contras other paintings by strolling like one of Blake’s naked Titvinidze-Kapon take a slightly terrestrial beings over the upper more jaundiced view of romantic curve on the globe, directly into the commitment, as seen in another beams of a vast solar orb, her tawny composition called “Marriage,” waist-length locks streaming over featuring a nude young couple one shoulder to unveil the slender marooned on an island of land sway of her hips and the shapely afloat on thin air. Here is a stark swell of her buttocks, she could not image of Eden uprooted and have been more radiant than the torn asunder, the limbs of the goddess gracing Teona Titvinidze- tree now bare of leaves or fruit, Kapon’s vibrant painting “Sunrise.” with ghostly wedding garments As J. Sanders Eaton noted in a aswirl instead on clothes hangers. previous review of one of her solo As various phantasmal winged exhibitions at Gelabert Studios beings and windblown white veils Gallery, Titvinidze-Kapon, who encircle the tree, this latter-day was born in the Former Soviet Adam forlornly embraces its lower Republic of Georgia and relocated trunk, while Eve perches aloof to the United States in 1995, is one and unapproachable on one of its of our most gifted contemporary upper branches in a striking image heirs to the Neo-Romantic tradition of estrangement. of Pavel Tchelitchew, whose large If pluralism is the defining canvas “Hide and Seek” was the characteristic of the postmodern most popular attraction at the era, then surely Titvinidze- Museum of Modern Art before Kapon must be one of its leading the publicity explosion attending practitioners, given her gift Abstract Expressionism upstaged for synthesizing a wide range figurative painting for decades. of art historical references and The more catholic climate of the inspirations within the context of postmodern era, however, seems her own highly personal aesthetic the perfect moment to revive agenda. Along with aspects of Neo-Romanticism, and there could Neo-Romanticism, Surrealism, be no more appropriate artist to and Symbolism, facets of Art spearhead such a movement than “Sunrise” Nouveau and Pointillism enter this accomplished painter and Boschian dreamscape of her own creation... into some of her paintings. In superb draftsperson, who appears to have a By contrast, other, gentler drawings by “Girl on Horse,” for example, a woman direct pipeline to her subconscious. Titvinidze-Kapon are made up of more lyrical leading a tame white pony and the little girl Perhaps the fantastic untitled drawings and less disturbing imagery. Usually centering astride its back merge with the sinuous swirls displayed, along with her paintings on her on the winsome young women who appear and ornate patterns, reminiscent of Gustav website are the most intimate vehicles for to serve as the artist’s alter-egos and point- Klimt’s Art Nouveau compositions, while the familiarizing oneself with Teona Titvinidze- of-view surrogates, their compositions fields behind them come alive with sparkling Kapon’s complex psyche. One in particular juxtapose with cherubs, picturesque castles sequins of Pointillist sunlight. boasts intricate eroto-surreal images worthy and other fairy tale architectural structures, Elements of both Art Nouveau fluidity of Hieronymus Bosch, delineated with a broken hearts (of both the Valentine and and Symbolism akin to that of Paul Ransom precision reminiscent of Durer: a creature anatomically correct variety), and elegantly and Maurice Denis also enliven Titvinidze- with a crab-claw for a head and the lower hand scripted phrases (“loss of a loved Kapon’s painting simply titled “Life,” body of a human female with legs splayed one” ... “past-life memories...”) suggesting in which the graceful figures of several to display her sex, next to a voluptuous fragments of thought jotted into journals, slender female nudes whirl like breeze- dominatrix garbed in nothing but sleek diaries, or sketchbooks, as the case may be leaves, the tawny tones of their hair and leather thigh-boots; another nude woman here. bodies harmonizing with the palette of being penetrated by a swordfish... If Titvinidze-Kapon’s drawings are the predominantly autumnal hues. These and other anatomical anomalies subconscious channels from which she derives Along with folkloric elements particular and varied visions of depravity are scattered, imagery for her paintings, her more benign to her origins in Georgia, all of the qualities like casualties on a battlefield, across a flat graphic excursions are most likely the ones that distinguish Teona Titvinidze-Kapon as surrealistic terrain. Above it all, looms the that inspire compositions such as “Sunrise,” a consummate postmodern Neo-Romantic large face of a full-lipped Slavic beauty and “Girls Picking Apples,” an idyllic, sunny painter come together in “Dreaming,” a resembling the artist’s self-portraits. Her hair scene set in a rustic orchard, where five veritable cornucopia of a composition, its falls in waves that hide one half of her face; willowy young women in long gaily colored very title defining the essential essence of her her forehead is encircled by a serpentine tiara dresses are seen filling large, overflowing aesthetic. with fangs that appear to sink into her scalp baskets with fruit from abundantly blooming –– Maurice Taplinger like troubling thoughts, causing tears to flow trees. Similarly upbeat is another painting from her one visible eye, as a single airborne in which Chagall-like lovers embrace on a rose with pronounced labial folds floats bridge above a picturesque little town, where To see more works by Teona Titvinidze- before her woeful gaze, its long thorned quaint steeples and weather vanes tilt at topsy Kapon go to her website: artbyteona.com stem defining the horizon line of the entire turvy angles like animated visions from an

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China at The Met by Ed McCormack everal years ago in a coffee shop in delicate rice paper. Scrutinizing them more oddly-shaped, flattened packing boxes, subtly Smidtown, I was going on about my closely, however, one discovers subject matter embossed with the imprint of the bottles newfound enthusiasm for Chinese ink that departs radically from the traditional or other products they once held. Implicit painting to the New York expressionist landscape, bird, and floral themes outlined in her work is a wry criticism of the glut of painter Peter Shwarzburg, when he admitted, in the Mustard Seed Manual of Chinese detritus and pollution resulting from the ever- “It’s beautiful in its own way, but to be Painting, first printed in the 17th century. increasing industrialization of China’s once perfectly truthful, I don’t understand the Some of the most striking departures are pastoral rural provinces. aesthetic.” in figure painting, aside from court portraits At the opposite extreme scale-wise, Ren If Peter were still alive today, I would and the like, never before a significant feature Jian’s monumental five-panel work in ink urge him to see the exhibition “Ink Art: of Chinese painting. When figures appeared, on polyester “Primeval Chaos” (1987-88) Past as Present in Contemporary China,” at they were little more than minute inkblots, subjects traditional Chinese landscape motifs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For this all but lost in the surrounding grandeur of enlarged far beyond the scale of a traditional enlightening survey hammers the final nail nature. Finally, the human image is brought handscroll, to an apocalypse of abstraction, into Kipling’s racist axiom “East is East and up close, given an almost unprecedented in which natural elements and forms West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” prominence. Rather than depicting solitary undergo an unearthly mutation, taking on It does so by featuring artists who retain travelers dwarfed by mountainous vistas, or an intricate, fantastic ornateness reminiscent the distinguishing characteristics, technique, scholars sipping tea in remote pavilions in the of “psychedelic” paintings and posters of the and aesthetic of classical Chinese painting old manner, Li Xiaoxuan evokes the bustling, 1960s. while incorporating elements of the most funky, city streets of modern China. In his Although he didn’t use an opaque progressive Western art as well. 1999 work in ink and light color on paper projector as Franz Kline did, another artist Of course, we’ve seen meetings of ranging over five panels, “Stocks! Stocks!” of the same generation, Liu Dan, used the those twains once widely believed to be Li summons up a huge cast of contemporary Western method of enlargement, employed irreconcilable for some time now, in the many types in a manner akin to the late Chinese- since the Renaissance, to square off a small cross-cultural influences that have occurred American painter Martin Wong’s oils of the pencil sketch for his “Ink Handscroll” over the past few decades between Eastern East Village. (1990). Explaining his departure from the and Western artists. In fact, they began way Huang Yihan endeavors to usurp what spontaneous techniques of classical Chinese back when the Impressionists and Post- he calls the “old geezers” of the medium painting to create this semiabstract landscape Impressionists started looking at Japanese with images of sleek, trendy young people over fifty-eight feet long (a size, despite prints and Asian artists discovered oil paints. who could have stepped out of a Japanese its title, that only a giant could unwind by And they picked up speed when the Abstract manga comic book. In Huang’s composition hand!), Liu says, “First I must prepare the Expressionists –– particularly Franz Kline in ink and color on paper, “The Cartoon stage, then I can dance on it.” in his black and white period –– went gaga Generation: Very Charming (2002),” Created in the wake of the Tiananmen over the splashy spontaneity of Zen literati teenagers dressed in Western fashions with Square tragedy, “Ink Handscroll” presents painting, although Kline had to simulate it by punky hairstyles crowd to the foreground of a rolling vortex of a composition showing enlarging and tracing small sketches with the the picture, posing, gesturing and waving as no signs of human life, suggesting the help of an opaque projector! though vying to get on camera at some youth possible eventual consequences of the sort “Ink Art,” however, is not only the culture TV broadcast. of “scorched earth” policy of military action first survey of contemporary Chinese art Then there is Liu Jin’an, who creates used by the country’s leaders to put down at the Met, but the first that focuses on figure paintings in ink and color with more the pro democracy demonstrations in the new approaches to the ancient art of ink resemblance to German Expressionism square. painting. Fittingly, it has been mounted in than traditional Chinese painting with their One can argue that the qualities of the museum’s Galleries for Chinese Painting dynamic anatomical distortion, strong lines, abstraction have always been present in and Calligraphy, which have heretofore been and stark shadows. Chinese art, with its absence of Western reserved for shows of classical scroll painting The more ubiquitous Asian genre of perspective and its concentration, even over several centuries and dynasties. landscape also undergoes its own revolution in its most detailed representation of Some of the ink paintings, created by in the pictures of Duan Jianyu, executed in specific subjects, on the quality of line as a various artists from 1980 to the present, look ink on ordinary industrial cardboard rather discrete entity. However, in the 1980s, a very much at home in these muted rooms, than the usual rice paper. The exquisite visual more deliberate effort was, among certain where many works are exhibited under glass and tactile tension in Duan’s “Beautiful painters, to challenge Western modernism in vitrines to protect them from the harsh Dream” series (1970), owes to the contrast by developing modes of abstraction light and temperature conditions that can between her delicately silhouetted nature incorporating aspects of Chinese ink painting fade or deteriorate works in ink on silk or imagery and the crude, corrugated, often and calligraphy.

6 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Cai Guo-Qiang, Chinese, born 1957 Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10 1990 Accordion album of twenty-four leaves; ink and gunpowder burn marks on paper Each leaf: 13¼ x 4¾ in. (33.7 x 12 cm) Lent by a private collection Photo: courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gu Wenda, a former oil painter in the blast. The fellow artist Zhang Tiemei to paint detailed Western manner, started experimenting animation classical Chinese landscapes, before being with new methods of ink application, is close in photographed to suggest that “the Chinese such as “splashing,” “washing,” and technique everyman....cannot be separated from “flushing,” along with brushwork. Some to the his cultural heritage, which, like his racial of Gu’s best known pieces from that films of identity, is as indelible as a tattoo.” period are his “Mythos of Lost Dynasties the South The human canvas for the performance Series,” juxtaposing “pseudo characters, African artist Zhang Huan is his own face. After recontexualized ideographs that are further graphic moving to the United States, his English subverted by being ‘faked, modified, artist limited, unable to define himself as an miswritten, dripped,’ with areas of landscape William individual in the face of racial stereotyping, imagery and abstract forms created with Kentridge, he staged a performance called “Family washes of diluted ink. Gu also erased all but are Tree,” in which Chinese characters conveying distinctions between ink painting, installation, given a biographical information were written on performance, and conceptual art in works more fluid his skin. The performance is documented such as his “Book from the Sky,” a response manner in the present exhibition with a grid of nine to the persecution of his intellectual parents by Sun’s large chromogenic photos in which the ink during the Maoist era Cultural Revolution. use of ink gradually blackens his entire face and bald Its centerpiece is a book of invented Wang Dongling, Chinese, rather, head. characters, none of which are decipherable, born 1945 Being Open and than Similarly, this inclusive survey at The Met commenting on the trauma of growing up Empty 2005 Hanging scroll; charcoal, thoroughly covers recent developments during an era in which “doctrine, news, and ink on paper Image: 87¼ x to create in Chinese ink art and does away with history were continually being rewritten and 57 in. (221.6 × 144.8 cm) the stereotypes. Happily, however, here texts could no longer be trusted.” The Metropolitan Museum of animation saturation clarifies, rather than obscures, the Sun Xun integrates the ages-old art form Art, Gift of the artist, 2013 drawings. subject at hand. of ink painting with video art in works such Photo: courtesy of The Other as Sun’s “Some Actions Which Haven’t Metropolitan Museum of Art artists Been Defined Yet in the Revolution,” which combine chronicles in surreal terms the life of a typical calligraphy with photography and “the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Chinese worker, starting off with a ringing human canvas,” as Huang Yan refers to his Fifth Avenue, through April 6, 2014 alarm clock and climaxing with a bomb own torso, onto which he enlists his wife and

Potluck EVERYWHERE A photography exhibit A photography exhibit Curated by Carolyn Reus Curated by Jack Cesareo March 5 - March 23, 2014 Jan. 22 - Feb. 9, 2014 Opening reception: Opening reception: Jan. 25, 2014, 2:30 pm- 5:30 pm March 8, 2014, 2:30 pm- 5:30 pm Closing reception: Feb. 9, 2014, 2:30- 5:30 pm Closing reception: Daniel Boyer • Silvia Soares Boyer • Arthur Cajigas • Celia Cruzado March 23, 2:30- 5:30 pm Ronald Howe • J.D. Morrison • Jean Prytyskacz • David Reibman Carolyn Reus • Harold Serban • George Strauss Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96 St. (NYC) Center Island Broadway@96 St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 Igor Kalinauskas: A Russian Artistic Cosmonaut Takes Off n his iconoclastic essay “Asphysixiating appears strikingly symbolic of creative ICulture,” the French painter Jean transcendence. Dubuffet laments the influence of culture on Portraiture is another area in which contemporary art, in favor of “outsider art,” or Kalinauskas makes a rich contribution to use his own term, “Art Brut”: the work of to contemporary painting. Superficially, naive, unschooled artists or mental patients. his portraits, with their areas of Igor Kalinauskas, the subject of a superb flat, unmodulated color devoid of recent exhibition at Caelum Gallery in traditional modeling or shadow, as Chelsea, is neither naive or unschooled; nor well as the impassive expressions of is he a mental patient. Quite the contrary, his sitters, can resemble those of Alex he is a renowned Russian psychologist Katz. But where Katz is influenced by specializing in studying the creative process as the two-dimensional imagery of Pop well as a business coach, musician, theatrical painting and the airbrushed slickness of director, lecturer, and author of thirty books advertising photography, Kalinauskas published in several different languages. But looks to the almost primitive simplicity when, at a relatively advanced age he took of Russian icons for inspiration. In up painting in 1996, as a direct result of his other words, Katz seeks a deliberate working with visual and other kinds of artists “emptiness,” in its own way not unlike simple pairing of two embryonic shapes in his clinical practice, he decided to educate Warhol’s emotionless vacuums, Kalinauskas –– one an oval resembling a blue eggplant, himself rather than undergoing formal study. endeavors to make his simplified likenesses the other a vibrant ribbon of yellow that After taking a couple of lessons in classical mirror his subjects’ souls, the very “energy disappears off the edge of the composition, painting from “one of the best teachers from core” of their individual personalities. Thus, both floating quite near each other at the St. Petersburg,” he arrived independently at while at first glance, with her off-white veil top of the picture space in a visceral red the same conclusion as Dubuffet: that further half covering her red hair, as she bathes the environment that could suggest the interior study could only serve to asphyixiate his own viewer in her clear blue gaze, “Barbara’s of the womb –– did indeed open a new world creative process. Portrait” may resemble a Byzantine painting of discovery for the artist. Obviously, he was correct; for proceeding of a saint, yet prolonged contemplation of the Numerous and varied abstract works on his own, following his intuitive aesthetic picture reveals the sophisticated complexity of followed, each one enabling Kalinauskas to dig instincts, he has emerged in a mere few years a contemporary woman. deeper into ideas and emotions that cannot as a formidable figure in the international The same goes for the two male subjects be described in words, to express his inner art scene. Among his best known projects titled, respectvely, “Martin’s Portrait” and reality more vividly, more deeply. The earliest was a newsmaking exhibition of his series “Roman’s Portrait,” which could resemble of these works are possessed of an engaging of oils “The Last Supper: Spirit, Flesh, 2nd century Egyptian funeral portraits in “crudity,” as if this autodidactic but intuitively Blood,” at the Leonardo Da Vinci National the ancient wax-based medium of encaustic. brilliant neophyte were inventing nonobjective Science & Technology Museum, in But look closely at Martin, with his close painting all over again, with a freshness of Milan, Italy, in 2006. He also presented a cropped Jean Genet haircut, five o’clock vision that eludes more self-consciously multimedia project, in collaboration with shadow, and eyes that veer sideways to avoid “sophisticated” artists. Indeed, these vibrant Bond magazine, at the high-profile Saachi meeting those of the viewer; Roman with paintings possess an intrepidness of vision Gallery in London; and had exhibitions his black hair curling down over his ears, his comparable to that other self-taught visionary in similarly esteemed venues in Moscow, pointed beard and mustache surrounding modernist, the Texas fisherman Forrest Bess. Lithuania, St Petersburg, Bratislava, Ukraine, his triangular face and full red lips, and large The circular shapes that dominate the and Zurich, Switzerland, where he debuted eyes that bore right through those of the “Wandering Stars” series appear in more his “Wandering Stars” series of paintings at onlooker; and notice, once again, subtle tentative form as gestural linear swirls in ArtConcept Gallery. (The latter series that nuances of human character that belie the single earlier abstractions such as “Soul,” highlighted his solo exhibition in Chelsea.) artist’s simplicity of technique. solidify here into full circles and gain a more If Igor Kalinauskas learned anything from Preparing to describe another painting precise presence without losing their ethereal his brief formal study of art, it was that what titled “The Self-Portrait,” one previous quality. Indeed, their numinous effect is he calls “good loneliness,” or creative solitude reviewer quoted Bunin: “The soul of another now enhanced by the artist’s growing ability in the studio, could not only enhance artistic is a dark place, our own is a much darker to evoke a sense of light through a newly progress, but put the artist in touch with one.” But, faced with the bearded, bearish developed chromatic refinement. spiritual resources and energies hidden deep yet genial, visage of Kalinauskas, as he sees Placed at the center of the canvas within inside his inner self. himself, the same writer concluded: “The perfectly square formats that create a This concept seems to manifest visually light blue eyes of the author are wide open to sense of unlimited space, and set against in the oil on canvas “Alone,” 2001, one of the world, the orange (not golden!—it could a complementary background hue, each Kalinauskas’ early landscapes, in which the imply a shade of sainthood) background cosmically suggestive floating orb is branches and verdant leaves of a solitary frames the figure without suppressing the surrounded by a radiant linear nimbus tree, rising out of closely packed gray rocks, viewer. As if the artist is looking out of the that bathes it in its own unique aura. The suggesting a quarry interrupted on both window into the street, towards the world, “Wandering Stars” series appears to be a sides by a winding road, appear to bend the sun and people.” culmination of all that has come before in the in the same direction as a single cloud Kalinauskas called his first abstraction, already impressive oeuvre of Igor Kalinauskas, drifting in the blue sky above. Painted in painted in 1999 in oil on cardboard (as whose, artistic trajectory itself suggests a a straightforward descriptive manner akin though scrimping on materials for fear of stellar journey. –– Byron Coleman to that of Rene Magritte, but sans that wasting a good canvas on an experiment famous Belgian surrealist’s manipulation of that could possibly meet with abject failure!) Igor Kalinauskas, recently seen at obvious incongruities, Kalinauskas’ “Alone” “Window To The Other World.” But this Caelum Gallery, 526 West 26th Street

8 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 “Awakening” to the Work of Seven Simpatico Painters n the recent group exhibition, elements of allusiveness. Although paintings atmospheric specters from the afterlife, two I“Awakening,” curated by participating such as her “Awakening” and “Meditation of these fully formed but faceless beings, painter Basha Maryanska, a group of diverse View from Inside III” appear drawn from enveloped in luminous auras of yellow and talents interpreted an intriguing theme. And natural phenomena, they are actually derived purple, confront the viewer in a large mixed given that major art museums have in recent from inner visions. The former oil combines media painting called “Walking Shadows.” years been featuring fashion exhibitions, it filmy white swirls interspersed with vaguely In another work by Maryanska, “Walking doesn’t seem at all incongruous that one figurative phantom forms in more fiery hues Shadows II,” four or five heads, also of the artists with work on view was the that could conjure up angels moving faster featureless, merge in the blue sky above what costume designer Eva Lachur –– particularly than the speed of light. The latter is a vortex- appears to be a phosphorescently glowing since Lachur, is also a fine painter. like composition suggesting windblown green, yellow, and orange hilltop. Around Born in Katowice, Poland, the daughter smoke. But both apparently allude to states of them staccato white dashes sparkle like of the renowned artist Zdzislaw Lachur, mind driven by strong emotions, rather than fireworks in a nocturnal sky. she started drawing and painting at an a physical sense of place. Then there is “Walking Shadows III,” early age, and as a young woman studied Much darker in mood and color is a tall in which six full-length figures of various art with Boleslaw Stawinski, cofounder of vertical oil called: “No Where.” Here the sizes and hues, suggesting a clique of kids of the “Krakow Group” of the 1930s. Since viewer experiences a plummeting sensation, different ages in an urban playground, are moving to the United States with her family like falling off a deep brown cliff into frothing seen standing in a row. Whether the artist in 1980s and becoming a U.S. citizen, she eddies of water below. Indeed, while “No intended this allusion or not, one is reminded has become known as a costume designer, Where” is one of Veryal Zimmerman’s most by the eerie quality of the image of all the singled out by theater critics for her ability to naturally allusive compositions, (as suggested innocent youngsters in recent years who capture the historical period of each play she in the description above), it is also among perished in big city drive-by gang shootings. dresses, even while interpreting its fashions her most emotional, and therefore one of her Maryanska is a versatile artist, capable of innovatively. most abstract, as her telling title takes pains working in several techniques and manners, On view in the gallery, along with some of to express. each suitable to the subject at hand. Here, her paintings, were photographs of Lachur’s Kathryn Hart, on the other hand, she employs a swift expressionistic technique designs for “The Twelfth Night,” “As You transforms pictorial space with rugged that enhances the ethereal nature of the Like It,” and “Hamlet,” as well as actual mixed media compositions, such as “Veiled figures. Are they indeed messengers from costumes displayed on clothing mannequins. Attempt.” This large work in burlap, wood another reality? All of her work was quite beautiful, but of and objects, like most of Hart’s compositions, “Where do these images come from?” particular interest to those like myself, who merges painting and sculpture with often the artist replies to such questions. “I have can claim no special knowledge of period unsettling subject matter in a manner that no idea. It comes from within.” Indeed, fashions, were Eva Lachur’s paintings, which caused one viewer to comment, “She’s like a both Maryanska’s paintings and her creative were especially impressive for their meticulous more abstract Francis Bacon.” approach to curating an exhibition appear to technique, intricate compositions, and her An astute insight; for Hart’s compositions, emanate from the same intuitive source. ability –– akin to that of the American painter if not as figuratively explicit in their imagery One of her main criteria seems to be Charles Burchfield –– to transform natural –– or anywhere near as blatantly grotesque selecting artist with fertile imaginations and subjects into fantastically personalized visions. –– as Bacon’s, are similarly transgressive, with inexhaustible creative resources such as one Such are his skills as a realist landscape odd protrusions, such as the empty paint- sees in the work of the Abstract Expressionist painter that Joseph Palmerio, born in smeared frame of canvas stretchers in “Veiled painter Elaine Weiner-Reed. Although based Philadelphia but a resident of Sarasota, Attempt,” jutting from the main body of the in Annapolis, Maryland, Weiner-Reed works Florida, for the past two decades, was piece like bones through flesh. in the tradition of New York School “action chosen in 2003 as the Everglades National “Midnight Diaries,” a mixed media painters” like Willem de Kooning and Grace Park Artist in Residence. He has also been work on wood panel, in a predominantly Hartigan, applying her vigorous brushwork commissioned to paint murals in several black, white, and red palette, comes across to nonobjective and figurative compositions public venues, including the Orlando Airport. as viscerally as one of Hannibal Lechter’s with equal spontaneity and zest. Like In “Awakening,” however, Palmerio nightmares. With its thick clots of tar-black Hartigan’s famous painting “Delancey showed a more intimate aspect of his work: pigment, splashes of white dripping over Street Brides,” Weiner-Reed’s “Red, Black, abstract and semiabstract oils with vigorous, areas of red, and coils of wire springing from and Blond” achieves a successful synthesis muscular, gestural compositions derived from its craggy surface like exposed veins, it has a of both, with a bold image of a voluptuous the forms, colors, and rhythms of nature. His Grand Guignol violence, perhaps influenced woman in a shoulderless red top and black lyrical floral composition, “Sleeping Beauty,” by the fact that Hart grew up the daughter slacks evoked in flowing, succulent strokes. for example, could be easily mistaken from of a plastic surgeon who occasionally Although the figures are not defined and a distance for an Abstract Expressionist allowed her to watch his performances in the her surroundings are indicated in a broad painting. But on closer perusal, quite specific operating theater. In Hart’s “Dialogue with a undetailed manner, the picture appears to plant imagery emerges from its bravura Madwoman,” a cloth form resembling a dead be a self-portrait, depicting the artist in her brushstrokes, as in the much larger oil he chicken painted black and suspended upside studio, the manner in which she merges with calls “Plantain Rhythm.” Two of Palmierio’s down by its feet appears tethered like a spider her surroundings, suggesting her passionate most vibrantly colorful works, are the large to its web to a large open frame by a maze of engagement with her vocation. Here, Weiner- oils on linen “Flutterfly,” and “Cataclysmic knotted wire and thread. Casting its shadow Reed’s ability to suggest so much within the Burst,” both taking the brilliantly sunny hues eerily on the gallery wall, like all of Kathryn self-imposed limitations of a loose of butterflies as springboards for fanciful Hart’s recent work this is strong stuff, not for Continued on page 23 compositions worthy of Odilon Redon. the squeamish. Veryal Zimmerman, born to a Polish By contrast, in artist-curator Basha mother and a father stationed in Germany Maryanska’s “Walking Shadows Series,” “Awakening,” recently seen at New Century with the U.S. military, has evolved her own the painter approaches human figures as Artists Gallery, 530 West 25th Street. way of combining aspects of abstraction with ethereal manifestations of the soul. Like

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 The French Connection: From Paris to New York wo groups of French artists visiting Tfrom two leading Paris galleries recently brought a new infusion of vital energy to the New York art scene when they were featured at Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery in Chelsea. From Art You Galerie, selected by its chic, black leather clad Directrice Laurence Debois, came Julie Wallois, who puts the supple touch of the human hand back into Pop portraiture. In Wallois’ painting, Laurence Debois Julie Wallois Roseline Al Oumami MYP “Surface,” a huge glamour girl face with the perfect features of a supermodel fills the magazines. artists this season!); “Un Monde,” a vigorous entire canvas. A cigarette dangles from her Alternately, Nadine Chantreau outlines gestural abstraction in which “Tachisme,” glossy full lips, its smoke curling around one the voluptuous nude bodies with her brush the Gallic cousin of Abstract Expressionism of her long-lashed, silvery-shadowed eyes or uses it in a more layered manner to is brilliantly updated for the postmodern like a baroque monocle. Superimposed over edit or partially obscure them, teasing the era by Roseline Al Oumami whose work the face of this seductive billboard icon are viewer’s eye with a kind of “hide and seek” appeared in the recent Montserrat exhibition; stenciled words and phrases in many subtle effect, to which she wryly alludes by adding Chris Christopher’s powerful “New Image” pastel hues, little semiotic teasers such as two photo-images of eyes to the intricate composition, “Sans Titre,” depicting a “Love” and “Mind your own business,” composition of “Art Urbain.” stylized battle between two horned beasts in among others, sending out mixed signals Another Art You painter, known only a technique as intricately dotted as Australian thoroughly in keeping with the imperious by the initials Myp, impressed one with a Aboriginal folk art; and Pauline Voge’s attitude of this cool goddess. powerful work in muted pinks and grays, abstract photo numerique composition Quite aside from its provocative subject accented with small areas of green. Entitled “Déferlante,” into which the imaginative matter Wallois’s picture possesses a painterly “Le Cri.” It depicts the face of a bald man, (or simply observant) viewer can Rorschach sensuality that calls to mind the vital period his face contorted, as if in a scream, his fragmented details of nude human anatomy. of “Handpainted Pop,” before Andy Warhol mouth agape, his white teeth showing, * * * discovered the silkscreen process. Indeed, his eyes screwed shut, as if in pain. This From Galleries Artitude, the second the velvety sumptuousness of Julie Wallois’ emotionally intense image is set afloat in the French venue included in the survey at style tempts one to agree, however belatedly, center of a bare white expanse, amid areas of Montserrat in Chelsea, the passionate with Walter Benjamin’s lament about how shadow created with dissolved, liquified gray collector and gallerist Jean Pierre Lorriaux art began to lose its “aura,” in the age of pigment that drips in long rivulets down to presented several of his prize exhibitors. mechanical reproduction. the bottom edge of the composition. The One of the most prominent was the painter The elusive quality of “touch” is also colors recall Giacometti, while the realism of and engraver J. Dann, who is also a writer, a a salient feature in the work of Nadine the face, seems more akin to Lucien Freud poet, and musician in the true Renaissance Chantreau, whose mixed media composition –– particularly that British painter’s portraits tradition. An alumna of conservatories in “Art Urbain,” combines a host of diverse of performance artist Leigh Bowery. Strasbourg and Paris, Dann’s paintings and photographic imagery with vigorous painterly Myp, however is a highly singular talent, prints have been described by certain critics panache. Chantreau has a particularly for just this ability to tread a fine line between as a “lyrical abstractions.” It would probably sophisticated sense of color and texture, literal representation and expressive distortion be more appropriate, however, to describe perhaps derived from her longtime love of –– all the while maintaining a fluidity that them as “baroque abstractions,” given the Monet, her favorite Impressionist, as well as lends the image a unique energy. diverse rang of formal vocabularies this artist’s Matisse. Her appreciation for these earlier Also represented by ArtYou were a work embraces. Just as in art of the past the masters has taught her a certain refinement, dynamic geometric abstraction “Abyssales,” term “baroque” encompassed styles ranging a luscious finesse, which she merges with by Nellissa; “Captive,” an emotionally from the restrained stillness of Poussin and an Art Brut effect; an almost graffiti-like, wrenching monochromatic acrylic of a Vermeer at one end of the spectrum to the roughness enhanced by her frequent use of melancholy face behind barbed wire by emotional intensity and the animated forms corrugated cardboard collage interjections Gedeon; “Portrait Rouge,” a sublimely of Caravagio and Rubens at the other, in the and other rugged additions to the variously simplified large-scale close-up of a face by case of this gifted contemporary painter, it painted surface. Joelle Troussier; “Triptique Aqua no, 3,” applies to the variety of qualities to be found But although Chantreau is self-taught, a dazzling acrylic of a fanciful undersea within a single composition. she is by no means primitive (unless one scene in jewel-like colors by Sandrine Jouas; For in contrast to the stifled sameness would also apply that same term to the style “Des Ténèbres à la Lumière,” a darkly in the work of many other abstract artists, of Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom she atmospheric arboreal landscape at dusk who in their eagerness to evolve a so- shares a certain rough elegance.). For only by Catherine Etraves-Le Heran; a vibrant called “signature style,” limit themselves an accomplished artist could consistently three-panel floral explosion titled “Les to repetitive forms, Dann appears able to summon up such a constantly engaging Coquelicots Triptyque” by Yannick Bernard generate a variety of approaches in each visual and tactile feast of colors, images, and whose work was in the recent show at painting or engraving, even when restricting painterly panache. There is a sense of process Montserrat Contemporary Art; four identical the palette to a brilliant orange hue, set in her work, which lends it an irresistible sculptures of a grinning face resembling a against a dense black background. The immediacy. Her impressive variety of vigorous 3-D caricatures of U.S. President Obama in most obvious association is with a nocturnal marks and brushstrokes, and deliberate drips, various candy-colors by Rachel whose work bonfire burning against the blackness of envelope her found photographic imagery was also seen in the recent exhibition at a moonless night sky in which not even a in a web-like maze that fastens them to the Monserrat Contemporary Art; and “Silent,” solitary star can be seen. For often the forms picture plane. Often the photographic a winsome portrait of a shaggy blond by Kaki seem to leap like windblown flames. However, elements are derived from pinups and erotic (mononyms appear to be “in” among French in other paintings the edges of Dann’s shapes

10 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 take on a serrated sharpness, as in the blades of a sunny day, sparkle rather than storms, painting create an ominous mood, as does certain ancient Asian or Persian weaponry. Or breaking into drops as bright as stars. Indeed, the anxiety that emanates from the figure else they may become liquidic in the manner one cannot remember seeing another artist of the woman almost becoming lost in the of volcano lava, with curves and drips flowing who depicts so many different aspects of bark of the anthropomorphically suggestive freely and casting off swirling fragments. In watery places ranging from “Spring Wave,” tree. Indeed, there is a similarly ominous these slightly more dispersed compositions in which the foam is as virgin white as note, suggesting an intriguing underlying there is an intriguing contrast between carnations and the water itself as luminously narrative beneath the placidness of Chardiny’s the meticulous quality of so-called “hard- green as newgrown grass; to “Trio,” in which domestic scenes. This ominous note becomes edged abstraction and spontaneity which Morin steps further back from the subject of quite explicit in “St. Machin,” in which can only be compared to the Pop painter her obsession to depict an entire marinescape, a bearded man is seen kneeling with his Roy Lichtenstein’s carefully calculated and with lower rolling waves in gently toward arms bound behind his back and his thighs precise renderings of Abstract Expressionist the foreground, and the late afternoon sun encircled by a rope. brushstrokes. (One could also liken the casting a path of blinding white light over * * * sensuality in this aspect of Dann’s oeuvre to the water just before sinking behind the pale An accomplished sculptor known by the generous curves of the fleshy figures in blue mountains on the opposite shore. the single name of Dotty is represented by the baroque paintings of the aforementioned In the only photograph one has seen of an exquisite nude sculpture of a sprightly Rubens. Isabelle adolescent Given the overall fluidity of this modern Morin, she girl, striding French painter’s forms it seems no wonder is cloaked along with one that Dann is also an engraver, since line is at in a white slender arm the very heart of these compositions. Indeed, fur jacket tossed behind linearity projects energy; yet in concert with in a folding her tousled shape and color, also suggests a host of chair on the head, and the diverse meanings in both the paintings and wet deck of other behind prints of the versatile J. Dann. a tour boat her back. Her Also from Gallerie Artitude, Isabelle intently pert mouth is Morin, appears as fascinated with water and sketching in Isabelle Morin agape in a big, a watercolor unguarded pad: an artist very much in her element. yawn. * * * Although it Another talented artist from Galeries is titled “The Artitude, Marie Chardiny strikes one as a Diva,” this latter-day descendent of Pierre Bonnard lovely bronze and the Nabis for the way she incorporates captures, as patterns into her figurative paintings. enduringly as Whether in the decorations within an interior any painting Dotty or the distinctive light and dark markings by Balthus, the in the bark of a tree, patterns often play an becoming innocence of a girl who is still important role in the organization of her unaware of her own beauty. compositions. Indeed this and another sculpture of a Indeed the white and dark brown patterns slightly more mature but equally comely in the bark of the large tree dominating female nude, carved in stone by Dotty, make the center of Chardiny’s painting “dans clear that unabashed beauty is still a highly le Platane” simultan-eously almost hides prized quality in contemporary French art. the figure of the woman in the white dress -–– Maurice Taplinger within its thick trunk, and creates the almost hallucinatory impression that the tree itself Galleries Artitude, opened in 1997 in the is a giant stylized running figure with one charming Swiss Village (dating back to the J. Dann foot on the 1900 World’s Fair) in the 15th arrondissement grass and in Paris, represents a large and diverse number waves as the great Japanese Uyiko-e master the other of leading contemporary artists, among Hokusai. The foamy fluidity with which in the air. them: Annabelblue, Yanni Arts, Claire-Lise she delineates the rhythmic flow of the sea The Backes, Bernard Blandin,Catherine Burgues, with lusciously thick impasto animates her surround- Carmen, Lis Cate, Michele Cavanna, Chrisn, compositions with life and immediacy. In ings are Ewa Dabrowska, Delboulle Berengere, Anne her painting “Storm,” her strokes capture quite Di Crescenzo, Edith, Anne Grazi, Benoit the curvaceous energy of a white-peaked domestic Hofmann, Jimgoart, Natalia Karpova, Katie, blue wave rolling towards an unseen shore. and Barbara Krajewska, Lydia Lefi, Severine Morin makes the frothy white shape of the seemingly Longevial, Celcile Louvel, Jean-Pierre Mosca, wave appear as alive as the curve of the neck safe in this Marie Olivier, Camille Perrottet, Francois and mane of a warrior’s horse in a classical Marie Chardiny pleasant Ratoll, Fabienne Regnard, Reynald, Kristine painting. suburban Sretkova, TKY, Chrisophe Verdon, YOL. * * * yard, where a child’s swing hangs from a rope By contrast, in Morin’s “Wave III,” the on one bare branch of the tree (or running French artists were recently seen at drops of foam at the top of a wave at the figure). But the shadows cast on the grass Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, edge of the shore where the sand begins, from outside the composition and entering 547 West 27th Street. on what, judging from the light, must be the picture space at the bottom of the

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 In Memory of Lou Reed (1942 -2013 by Ed McCormack (with help from Jeannie McCormack)

12 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 *

*For all his sardonic humor, Lou was a better friend to me than I was to him. To read more about my betrayal of our friendship, google: Lou Reed Ed McCormack Vanity Fair

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 “Free Expression” Takes Many Forms in WSAC Group Show any of the most gratifying discoveries in who often illuminates her verse with “Reach Up,” its energetic rising shapes in Mtoday’s art scene come sans all the hype watercolor imagery, was represented with variegated hues as freely floating as the poured that usually precedes the latest 90 day wonder, a work called “To Remember Kelly––The color field paintings of Paul Jenkins. Equally scooped up fresh out of some expensive and Storm.” Under an evocative vision of a yellow impressive were two mixed media works by prestigious art school by a high-powered art moon casting its white beams over nocturnal Barnett featuring glued down ginkgo leaves dealer in search of a new product with long blue waves as rhythmically configured as in a forming mandala-like compositions on solid shelf life. One fine case in point is a mature marine scene by John Marin, Rudder inscribed green and blue painted grounds. African-American artist named Herb Evans the following prose poem: “In the quiet of Amy Rosenfeld, whose style varies three of whose painting we recently caught up the deep dark night the moon shone as bright greatly from show to show but is invariably with in the group show “Free Expression,” as the sun. On the beach, in the outer banks characterized by a certain honesty and curated by participating artist Sonia Barnett for of North Carolina sounds of waves crashed freshness, showed two lively overall gestural the West Side Arts Coalition. against the sand. I felt the wind blow through compositions “Pink Expression,” and Evans’s “Spirits” is a vigorous gestural my hair. It was as soothing as a mother singing “Intertwine Shapes, the latter a bright acrylic abstraction in subtly burnished hues that her baby to sleep...” on canvas featuring banner-like hard-edged conjure up a sense of the supernatural while Along with two other evocative neo- yellow, orange, blue, green, and purple color reveling in the down-to-earth physicality of expressionistic landscapes, Lula Ladson, areas. oil pigments. His mixed media work “Close another artist adept at weaving a spell, showed Valerie T. Kirk eased gracefully between Quarters” is a figuratively suggestive (albeit an idyllic oil on canvas called “Secret Garden,” brilliantly colorful and antically wiggly also abstract) composition that calls up the depicting a leafy oasis of serenity, where biomorphic shapes in a precise but ghost of Bob Thompson; while Evans’s oil verdant foliage and lushly blooming pink and energetically animated abstraction titled and collage “After the Rains” merges a moody yellow flowers surround a welcoming white “Dream On,” and a calligraphic neo-Pop monochromatic photographic image of the bench. composition adopting ornate graffiti-like city with a colorful procession of vigorously Versatile painter Emily Rich, who has baroque lettering called “Purple Dream.” brushed semiabstract figures suggesting an a special gift for transforming everyday Also featuring Lynn Lieberman’s meticulous African marketplace. subjects into colorful, vigorous abstract maplike watercolors of specific Manhattan Robert N. Scott showed two oils on contexts showed a group of graceful and storefronts and street locations; “Planter #1”, a canvas respectively titled “Cosmos # 1” airy watercolors of New York buildings and delicate still life in watercolor by Arlene Finger; and “Moonshine.” Both impressed us for rooftops. Her most action filled composition, “Daisies,” Pillar Malley’s full-length sepia- their combination of mystical interplanetary however, was “Fast Traffic,” in which several toned pastel of a graceful kneeling girl, her imagery and purely aesthetic attributes, such as sketchy figures are seen mysteriously clustered, Continued on page 22 vibrant colors that emit a sense of line couched as though either grappling or embracing, amid “Free Expression,” Curated by Sonia Barnet within strong compositions mostly comprised rooftops and water towers. recently seen at of floating orbs and flowing linear swirls. Sonia Barnett showed a totally abstract Broadway Mall Community Center, 96th Doubly gifted poet/artist Anne Rudder, but formally symbolic acrylic on canvas titled Street (center island.) G&S Classifieds opportunities WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION (WSAC) established 1979, welcomes new members from MONTSERRAT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY is reviewing artist all geographic areas. There are approximately 14 exhibits per year for Fine Arts, Photography, and Craft portofolios for its new Chelsea Gallery. National and International artists are invited to submit. Sase, slides, Arts. Music, Poetry, Theater and Dance programs available. Contact info: Tel. 212-316-6024, photos and brief artist bio. Send to: Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 W. 27 St., NYC 10001 email- [email protected] or website- www.wsacny.org. Or send SASE to the West Side Arts Coalition, PO Box 527, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025. Visit our ground floor gallery at 96th Street & THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE Broadway (on the center island) New York City. Open: Wed. 6-8pm, Sat. & Sun., 12-6pm. •Learn how to use your body corrrectly. •Improve your posture. CUSTOM PICTURE FRAMING for artists and galleries. Museum quality, selected •Achieve lasting results. frames & mats. Float & dry mounting, canvas stretching. Jadite Galleries, 662 10th Ave. (betw. A hands-on redirecting of the mind and body that has been used successfuly for over a century. Learn 46/47 Sts.) Hours: 12 - 6 pm, Free delivery in Manhattan. 212-977-6190 [email protected] how to use your body in a more efficient way which will have far-reaching benefits. It involves changing old habits and learning new ones to last a lifetime. Please call for a private consultation and intro- NOHO GALLERY is viewing portfolios in all media for our Chelsea location. Visit ductory lesson. Union Square studio, or house and office calls available. Limited Introductory nohogallery.com for application form, or send SASE to Noho Gallery, Offer: Consultation, photo analysis, intro lesson plus free additional lesson. Sliding scale available. 530 West 25th Street, NY, NY 10011. DIANA MULLMAN, AmSAT. 212-734-7875

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14 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Spanish Artist Sola: Neo-Constructivist Experiments in the Climate of Postmodernism professor of sculpture at the Art School Although the title of the exhibition, vocabulary Ain Seville, the Spanish artist Sola “Elemental Realms,” adds to the sense of with which to incorporates three-dimensional elements unusual phenomena taking place before symbolize such in her paintings that lend them a uniquely one’s eyes, Sola speaks of her artistic mission metamorphosis. dynamic effect. in more down to earth terms. Or at least in In the first Especially striking in this regard is the terms of the global revolution brought about composition collage and mixed media composition that by the discovery of cyberspace: of the series, Sola calls “Connection V,” in which jaggedly “Each piece of work has its own individual “Chrysalis I,” elongated red shapes suggest stylized value,” she states. “However, they do the elongated lightning bolts, as they protrude from the make more sense as a whole series that sharp edged edges of the canvas. Given the formal stasis displays the process of transformation. The oval form of of the rest of the composition –– a large transformation of the world due to new which she “Chrysalis I” black half circle at the top of the canvas, with technology and communication amongst spoke, its various semitriangular blue shapes below it, human beings, the social networks and the pointed tip rising above the top of the wood set against an off-white ground speckled with internet. These things are causing so many panel, is sharply defined in areas of black pale tints of subtly modulated color –– the changes, that they are actually changing our and red. It appears to have a diamond-like total effect is like a Roy Lichtenstein comic world. Thus, I express this evolution and solidity. In Chrysalis III the same elongated strip explosion ignited within a Russian Neo- all of these changes in my new work. I use shape appears to be almost submerged in a Constructivist painting. abstract language; the world is represented red fluid-like background, perhaps to express Indeed, Sola invariably employs a strong by a circle in the paintings at the beginning the emergence of technology from earlier formal armature as a launching pad for her of the series. In the following paintings, more mysterious belief systems. But we imaginative flights of metaphysical fancy. this slowly transforms into an elongated witness its dispersal in Chrysalis V,” where the Thus. as formal in design and austere in pointed oval shape, similar to a chrysalis. sharp-edged shards of the disassembled shape execution as it is, her work is also poetically The interconnected lines within the chrysalis scatter like fiery stars over predominantly blue allusive, as seen in the aptly named represent communication. They evolve into geometric areas of color within what appears “Revelations I,” in which a semicircular black lines breaking into terrible tears, expressed to be a vast cosmic expanse. form appears to deconstruct on the left side by vivid colors. At the end of the series a Her paintings are electrically alive with the of the composition, shedding sharp shards new order appears. There is a rebirth of a excitement of exploring a new global frontier. afloat against a vibrant blue background. new, perhaps more harmonious, world. This –– Byron Coleman The perfectly square format of the wood series is called ‘Chrysalis,’ a metaphor for a panel on which it is painted suggests limitless changing world; the world is likened to a Sola, Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, dimensions, as though one is witnessing caterpillar that changes into a butterfly.” February 7–27, 2014. some profound event in outer space. Sola has obviously evolved a unique formal “New Year, New Art” on the Upper West Side n her large portrait “Ayrton,” in the West Snow,” however, with its delicate tracery of in acrylics such as “The Cheddar Cat,” ISide Arts Coalition’s recent exhibition, raised intaglio weeds, express both fragility “Silver Cat and Green Clock,” and “Cat curated by Margo Mead, Gail Comes and strength. with the Blues.” Known for her luscious abandoned her usual semiabstract style of Then there were the still lifes in watercolor color, impasto as thick as cake frosting, large-scale, often monochromatic, close-up of Clare Stokolosa, who employs the medium combined with a light touch akin to Ludwig portraiture for a more literal realist portrait in with the transparent freshness that suits it Bemelmans, Birns outdoes herself for charm oil on canvas. Titled “Ayrton,” and rendered best, with no white pigment added, the white in these engaging pictures. in a full palette of colors, Comes’ portrait of the paper alone serving for all highlights. Jack Cesareo, on the other hand, a head of a young man with mysteriously With sure strokes Stokolosa captures the conceptual photographer known for his closed eyes had her characteristic impact, even glint of aluminum or silverware, the smooth pictures of a giant inflatable cupcake that without the surreal, robotic “bionic” features surface of china, the way light is absorbed by he totes to different locations, plays it with which the artist often endows her big the pink flesh of watermelon or glows on the straight this time around with a Turneresque portrait heads. pale green skin of grapes. atmospheric acrylic marinescape, titled Another realist, Peter Salwen, showed six Richard Carlson, best known for his “Hudson River Marsh Cold Spring.” small oils on canvas panel, depicting figures in restrained mixed abstractions within the Although his painterly skills are quite city streets in a vigorous atmospheric manner. format of a grid showed a real departure respectable, longtime followers of this wry Salwen’s “Twilight on Canal Street,” with here with an acrylic painting called “Pugs talent will be watching closely to see if this its moody dusk sky, and “Evening Rush vs. Wolverines.” Surely there must be an indicates a brand new direction for Cesareo Hour on Ninth Avenue,” in which groups of interesting story behind this witty painting, or yet another conceptual conceit. pedestrians and passing traffic are rendered also in a grid of 16 squares, juxtaposing Margot Mead’s contribution “Hoping in breezy bravura strokes with snapshot the heads of pug dogs with those of wide- for Time Squared” also is something of a immediacy, are both standouts. eyed, slack-jawed wolverines and other less departure for this frequent exhibitor, with Livia Monaco’s photo etchings of floral identifiable (one might as well go ahead and its luminously colorful gridded abstract arrangements tinted with soft blue or pink say abstract) shapes arranged in more or less composition encompassing both freeform hues have an eerie, almost funereal feeling, identical rows. But the painting, in its own Continued on page 23 akin to Ivan Albright’s haunting oil on canvas antic way, speaks for itself; which is to say: of a wreath on a door, “That Which I Should what you see is what you get! “New Year, New Art 2014,” recently seen at Have Done, I Didn’t Do.” What Carlson does for canines, domestic Broadway Mall Community Center, Monaco’s etching on chine-colle “Winter and wild, Meg Boe Birns does for felines 96th Street (center island.)

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 Campillo’s Combination of Conceptual and Painterly Attributes lthough the Spanish artist Joan Campillo as for the sensuous coloristic and red lines leap against the white AFerre, who prefers to be known only textural qualities that prompted primer coat above a simple as “Campillo, is what is normally called “a one to term him a “painter’s streak of vibrant green pigment, painter’s painter,” he prefers not to be known painter” in the lead paragraph of evoking mountains in a verdant primarily as a painter, because, as he puts it, the present review. landscape with elegant formal “My creativity has found its way into other In some of his more economy and grace. To another areas of interest besides just my art. I like to adamantly abstract compositions, eye, in another mood, however, solve problems and invent solutions. I possess vibrant areas of color are laid those leaping lines could several patents that are under development. down either with a brush or just as easily suggest the vital And I also have developed designs for building palette knife in layers of acrylic fluctuations of a hospital heart projects.” that alternate between thick monitor. One of the most impressive of these was impasto and semitransparent Which is why it may be unwise a building that Campillo designed for the glazes. Particularly striking in to “Rorschach” overly subjective World Trade Center Memorial project. this regard is a boldly gestural interpretations onto Campillo’s Unfortunately, the artist missed the deadline composition in which one abstract compositions, when one for submitting proposals for consideration, but roughly square form within can simply relish them for their says, “I hope one day to see this idea actually another blazes like an open furnace at its considerable abstract attributes. built by an interested developer.” center with fiery red and golden yellow hues. At the same time, however, how can one In the meantime, the plans he designed are Other paintings by Campillo, although resist doing so with an artist who combines compelling unto themselves, when viewed abstract overall, offer what Willem de the spontaneous gestural energy of a pure as a conceptual art creation; specifically, the Kooning once referred to, in relation to his “action painter,” such as the flamboyant huge futuristic conical metallic structure that own abstractions, as “slippery glimpses” Frenchman Georges Mathieu, and the sober Campillo envisions situated on a vast green of descriptive imagery: a hauntingly compositional power and tactility of his fellow lawn in downtown Manhattan to pay tribute monochromatic vision of the Twin Towers countryman Antoni Tapies, with the subtle to the rescuers who rushed, at great risk to standing like pale ghosts in a white mist; three conceptual sensibility that belongs to Joan themselves, to aid those trapped in the rubble severely simplified vertical forms, resembling Campillo Ferre alone? –– Byron Coleman of the fallen Twin Towers. inverted exclamation points with red dots for The paintings by Campillo on view in the heads, simultaneously suggesting a row of Campillo, recently seen at Montserrat year-round salon exhibition at Montserrat figures lined up as before a firing squad against Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27th Contemporary Art are similarly striking for the a wall of variegated greens and yellows... Street, is also in the year-round salon. monumental simplicity of their forms, as well In yet another acrylic on canvas, rhythmical www.artcampillo.com A Group Show “Open” to New Photo Approaches “ pen 2013,” curated by Robyn Gecht for revealing technical mastery. Especially unusual Sondra Weiner’s “Sun Simplicity (After Othe West Side Arts Coalition, presented were “Dried Roses,” a compelling study in Sandy-Finding Self),” is a sort of self-portrait, a varied survey of trends in contemporary tone and texture accomplished with pinhole in which we see the silhouetted figure of art photography. Gecht, also one of the photography, and “Arch, Central Park,” in the photographer, reflected in a puddle that participating artists, showed large digital prints which a technique transparency film backed she straddles, camera raised to her eye. The of the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, an annual with aluminum foil imbued a rough old stone building to one side of her soars skyward in event that rivals the Halloween Parade in the structure with a ghostly quality. radical perspective lending the picture a sense of Village for garish spectacle. Our favorite was Mystery in another key emanates from dislocation that the title suggests. Gecht’s picture of a zaftig mermaid queen “Hooded Figure in Snow,” a black and white Nature and floral studies are eternal subjects with two large seashells clamped over her inkjet print by Len Speier, notable for its surreal to which two of the artists featured in this ample breasts, strutting bodaciously along the atmosphere, as the spooky figure in black exhibition bring the sensibility of contemporary boardwalk in a tight blue gown and matching strolls over the white mounds between bare photography: Deena Weintraub’s series of elbow gloves, flanked by two other buxom black trees. Speier also scores with “Lady in black and white lith print “Les Fleurs du Mal” contenders in similarly flamboyant get-ups Red,” a contrastingly colorful inkjet print of a makes sensually shadowed, erotically suggestive holding banners declaring “I Love Coney transvestite in a peacock feathered headdress black and white plant forms a visual metaphors Island,” with the cheering crowds of spectators gesturing broadly with a cigarette. for Baudelaire’s famous poem sequence of in the background. Jean Prytyskacz encapsulated the holiday that title, which translates from the French as Just as festive, if not as gaudy, were Celia season with a group of glitteringly bejeweled “Flowers of Evil.” Thom Taylor, on the other Aguiar Cruzado’s color prints of a male cityscapes, as well as a succulent color image hand, employs lyrical pastel tints with a slightly and female Latin-American folk troupe in of a Thanksgiving turkey fresh from the oven. Day-Glo quality to enhance the lyrical effect of immaculate white costumes striking theatrical But perhaps Prytyskacz’s most affecting picture his nature study “Maple Tree,” and employs an poses against an ornate stucco-colored was “The Village Halloween Parade,” focusing infrared technique which infuses his digital print backdrop. Equally stagey in yet another manner harrowingly upon an effigy of a human skeleton “Bannerman’s Castle” with a ghostly quality. were two black and white silver gelatin prints calculated to get under the viewer’s skin. Then there is Carolyn Reus, who employs by Paul Margolis: In “The Juggler,” a virtuoso Arthur Cajigas was represented by a group of fiery digital hues to “outshine” nature in her in a white dress shirt and polka-dot tie was varied travel images ranging from the densely color print “Sunset,” and evokes a retro 1950s captured with several objects in the air; In “Two populated, bustling East Indian street scene teenage rock and roll fantasy with her image of Performers,” one man balances on a large “The Cabbies,” to a transcendent vision of The a sleek convertible “Pink Cadillac.” ball while playing an accordion, while another Taj Mahal, its spire rising against a clear blue –– Byron Coleman gestures and sings as though in a musical sky. Perhaps Cajigas’ most visionary picture, adaptation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.” however was “The Doorway,” a serene view “Open 2013,’ recently seen at JD Morrison imparts still life subjects with an of sunlight streaming through and the arched Broadway Mall Community Center, unaccustomed mystery in a half dozen prints portal of an elaborately tiled temple. 96th St. (center island).

16 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Danièle M. Marin’s Glowing Visual Essay on Still Life lthough the featured works in Danièle famously said: “Sometimes a cigar is just a the transcendence of mundane matter, as AM. Martin’s most recent exhibition cigar!” symbolized by the wine bottles, vases, and were groupings of several artfully juxtaposed Still, these two brooms immediately other everyday objects on tabletops in the paintings, meant to be viewed as overall struck one, admittedly in a fanciful way, panels below. (Conspicuous by their absence works, that the artist calls “Interactions,” let’s as competing symbols of captive domestic are the fruits and flowers so often present in begin by contemplating the only composition drudgery and the freedom of flying witches conventional still life compositions, which on a single canvas in the show, which hung –– or else of independent female artists, if you one gets the feeling Marin generally avoids apart from the others on the rear wall of please! because they come too laden with symbolic Noho M55 Gallery. It is titled “Reflection Next to a large silver pitcher in the lower clichés of abundance and eroticism that she on a Still Life,” presumably both because it part of the composition are four aluminum is eager to avoid in favor of her own less contains a self-portrait by the artist, reflected industrial lampshades. While one rests face- obvious juxtapositions of objects.) as in a mirror within the picture, as well as down on the floor of the model’s platform, In order to arrive at this pinnacle of because it is a reflection, in the more cerebral the other three apparently defy gravity, taking abstraction, however, at which, as Marin once sense of the term, on the subject of still life flight, like orbiting planets, between the long put it in another context, one may “unfocus itself. thin legs of the little table that supports the from the images ... think them away and The self-portrait shows a slender, let the color, abstraction, rhythm take elegant, serious-looking woman who over,” the artist obviously believes one bears a certain incidental resemblance must deliberately work through the to Elaine de Kooning, in the process mundane gravity of daily existence and of photographing herself with a all its worldly detritus, lest the escape cable operated remote switch. into the ether of pure aesthetics turn out Unlike the inanimate objects in the to be an empty victory. composition, which are rendered in a In Marin’s case, too, the very process full palette of colors, this self-portrait of painting is transcendental unto itself. is painted in grisaille. Since nothing Thus the interactions in these works appears to happen by accident in the are not only between the relationships work of an artist as thoughtful as of one object to another within the Marin, one can only assume that she individual compositions; and to the deliberately chose to depict herself larger overall composition that each in black and white, not so much as grouping of separate but connected an act of self-effacement, as to create paintings comprises; but also to the the sense of a somewhat phantom distinctly different techniques and styles presence, altogether subservient to that the artist calls upon in the act of the objects to which she surrenders painting –– often combining several in a her full attention in the solitude of single work. her studio. For few painters at work today At the center of the same command the virtuoso means that composition is a torso-length dress- Marin has readily at hand at this point form: a headless, limbless symbol of in her career, enabling her to quote femininity that has been a powerful from art history as freely as Marianne component in Marin’s work since Moore quotes from past literature in her the first solo installation by her that marvelously eclectic poems, merging caught our eye some years ago in the realist, surreal, and abstract elements same Chelsea venue. within a striking postmodern disregard From the bare neck of this for all stylistic barriers. (Indeed, she decapitated multiple amputee does so with an anarchic zest sometimes mannequin –– which is propped up reminiscent of Larry Rivers, switching on its own tall pole-pedestal atop “Interaction 5” from full volume rendering of a figurine a long-legged table, which, in turn or ceramic jug to abstract expressionist stands on a platform of the type on which dress form. drips or iconoclastic swipes of bare charcoal at nude models pose in life drawing art classes This metaphysically-suggestive detail, the flick of a supple wrist.) –– flows a long salmon-pink scarf, draped as well as several others –– particularly the In her “Interaction” series, Danièle in the distinctive manner peculiar to chic, ghostly bowling-pin and colorful circles, M. Marin goes beyond the exquisite sophisticated Parisian women such as the floating around shadowy bottles and vases in ekphrasis that makes the poet and writer artist herself. one of the panels that makes up “Interaction Guy Davenport’s slender volume “Objects This eerie centerpiece is flanked by two # 5” –– indicate how far Marin has evolved, on a Table” the definitive essay on the long-handled brooms leaning against the from the overt feminist themes of her early genre, to meditate visually on still-life, studio wall. Except when they are as obvious paintings and installations to the subtle, while demonstrating, from several angles as the human skulls in 16th century Flemish multileveled semiotics of the present series. simultaneously, many of its most sublime nature morte “vanitas” compositions Viewed from the bottom up, the vaguely attributes. (invariably alluding to the brevity and cruciform arrangement (except for the –– Ed McCormack meaninglessness of earthly life), before trying window on the wall at its center, where no to second-guess the intended meanings panels meet, a common feature of the entire behind simple objects in a still life, it is wise series) in the seven-panel work, “Interaction to remind oneself of what Sigmund Freud # 1,” progresses from still life imagery Danièle Marin, recently seen at Noho Gallery (or was it Groucho Marx?) is said to have to total abstraction. The suggestion is of M55 Art, 530 West 25th Street

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 Ines de Poligny’s Harmonious Blend of Freedom and Precision n Argentinean artist of the earthy background, too, is Amixed French and Russian subtly glazed, almost as though by extraction, Ines de Poligny states an airbrush, lending the painting a her artistic mission as an attempt Pop quality. Here, one sees another “to express opposites coexisting,” example of the artist’s professed and “to express nature’s qualities, love of contrasts held in check by bringing my own abstract vision a classical sense of balance. Her to it.” earlier influence, her first stylistic Perhaps de Poligny’s most infatuation, was with Surrealism, overtly nature-derived painting, and she has apparently incorporated due to its horizontal format and some of its deliberate techniques of the sense of a rugged terrain that figurative definition, along with the its rocky shapes and ruddy red freedom of abstraction to the process hues suggest, is her composition in of creating her present work. acrylic and oil on canvas “Bosque This fruitful merging of the en Ilamas” (Forest in Flames). freeform and the precise is also Another work executed in the evident in de Poligny’s work in same medium, in cool blue and acrylic and oil on canvas “Azzafrán,” steely gray hues on a more suitably consisting of bold vertical forms in vertical canvas, is called “Nueva black, yellow, and tan which span Eva.” It depicts tall, somewhat the length of the composition, abstracted but still distinguishable, from the top to the bottom, edge urban towers soaring skyward, to edge. These stripes are boldly with looser, splashier forms laid down with a broad brush in a resembling smoke –– presumably, loose gestural manner, with ragged, in the light of the frightening edges that sometimes splash onto events of our present age, from and mingle with the adjoining color a terrorist’s bomb –– about to or onto the bare white priming coat bring them crashing back down to of the canvas. At the very center of earth. Such are the grim realities of the composition, however, is a more our “Nueva Era” that even many precisely painted broad stripe of tan, of the most abstract artists of all its edges neatly lined with yellow, nations are emotionally affected by “Raices Multiples” that provides a resting point for the the contrasts that they present. emblematic composition, resembling a family eye. Fortunately, however, de Poligny, still finds crest for humanity at large. In keeping with Ines de Poligny’s love of much to be hopeful about in works such as Equally energetic in its own manner is de contrasts, it functions like a classical column, “Raices Multiples,” a presumed celebration Poligny’s dynamic composition “Splash,” perfectly balancing without inhibiting the of her own mixed ethnic roots and those which resembles an abstract expressionist energetic flow of the composition. of others. For here is a dynamic and painting subjected to a more refined, –– J. Sanders Eaton exuberant work, in richly burnished ochers premeditated technique, with the splashy and browns that mingle harmoniously with form of the title rendered in tones of blue black and white hues, in a lively composition and white with a linear precision akin to Ines de Poligny, Agora Gallery 530 West comprised of a wide variety of organic and Hokusai’s famous woodcut “The Wave.” 25th Street, March 4 - 25, 2014 geometric forms and shapes that add up to an Rather than being impetuously painterly, Reception: Thursday March 6, 6pm - 8pm

Black Renaissance 2014 Dreams & Reflections 2014 A Fine Arts Exhibit A Fine Arts Exhibit Curator: Sonia Barnett Curator: Daniel Boyer & Silvia Soares Boyer February 12 - March 2, 2014 March 26 – April 13, 2014 Reception: Feb. 15, 2:30 - 5:30pm

Carole Barlowe • Sonia Barnett • Sandra Brannon Gertrude V. Fleming • Nate Ladson • Margo Mead Reception: Dammika Ranasinghe • Dorothy Scott • Robert Scott Monique Serres March 29, 2:30 - 5:30pm

Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96 St. (NYC) Center Island Broadway@96 St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org 18 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 New Century Group Show Aspires to the Highline urated by participating artist Basha synthesis of vision and imagination. to enrich the textural quality of his surface in CMaryanska, “Highline Art Show” brings Similarly Elaine Weiner-Reed moves an abstract interpretation of a festive subject. together a group of international talents of easily between the two genres as well, From canvas to canvas, Hunter pulls out varying styles, genres, and techniques. One of but tends to veer more frequently toward all stops, employing a variety of techniques the most visionary is Polish-born U.S. citizen abstract expressionist mixed media works ranging from thick impasto, to translucent Eva Lachur, a well known New York theatrical incorporating a variety of different collage oil and acrylic washes, to linear forms created costume designer who also creates intricately and mixed media materials: lengths of rope, with ink, to juicy areas of color applied with beautiful paintings that often feature willowy, patches of pigment-encrusted cloth or burlap, a palette knife, to lend his paintings a sensual tawny-haired young beauties reminiscent of fragments of wood, bits of wire –– apparently tactile appeal that tempts one to want to Sandro Botticelli’s famous Venus. anything near at hand that can be swept touch as well as savor them visually. In Lachur’s “Dream,” one such figure up into the painting process. Possessed of a Frequent exhibitor Kathryn Hart has been is suspended in midair in a Buddha-like compelling physicality, compositions such as attracting considerable attention lately for her lotus position amid various other images. In Weiner-Reed’s “Night at the Improv” and tactile, mostly black and white (sometimes another intricately detailed work by the same “Jazz Trills and the Dance” are enlivened by with glistening splashes of red added to artist, a variety of floral and other organic a uniquely funky beauty. increase the visceral effect), found object forms comprises a nature tableau as filled with Daisy Velo, a 17-year-old artistic prodigy assemblages, featuring tumorously bulging energy as one of Charles Burchfield’s masterly and honor student from North Texas has stuffed and wrinkled forms and brashly watercolors. already had a solo exhibition at the Back torn, distressed, and otherwise violated Veryal Zimmerman, another painter Room Gallery in Beacon, New York. surfaces that lend abstraction a unique new with a visionary sensibility who often takes Trees are presently a favorite subject, and shock value. Like the burnt dolls and other inspiration from nature for her oils and pastels, she interprets them in a variety of ways in atrocities of the Beat generation California is represented by an atmospheric cloudscape mixed media. In “Scene from Highline,” funk sculptor Bruce Conner, Hart’s pieces, titled “A View from Above.” Zimmerman also for example, Velo presents a lone sparrow such as “Invisible Fissure,” in which a ragged shows “ On the Highline,” a fantastic image perched on a limb of a bare winter tree black shape resembling an animal carcass of an old-fashioned locomotive enveloped in a set against a deep blue night sky. It is a is tethered to an empty black frame by an tempest of roiling steam, possibly imagined by simple but affectingly poignant image. In intricate spiderweb of black thread, have a contemplating the past of the Highline when “Reaching,” another shadowy tree grasps at queasy seductiveness, sending out intimations it was a railroad, rather than an elevated tourist a pale daytime sky like a skeletal hand. Then of mortality and other distress signals that attraction. there is Velo’s pastel, “The beginning,” in grip the viewer in the pit of the stomach and Interpreting the ostensible theme of the which what appears to be an egg-shaped refuse to let go. exhibition more literally, Maria Angeles moon glows mysteriously out of an Dominick Botticelli, reportedly a Hegglin, an artist born in Cordoba, Spain, atmospheric nocturnal expanse. direct descendant of the aforementioned shows neoimpressionist paintings that Dorota Michaluk creates intriguing mixed Renaissance master of the same surname, explore images of the Highline in all four media works by drawing over photographs, as combines Symbolism and Surrealism in seasons. Working in a vigorous palette knife seen in her image of a trendy young woman meticulously executed canvases. In “Queen technique, Hegglin evokes its color and light set against a backdrop of the Highline, as of Cups,” a platinum-tressed beauty holds a with vigor –– particularly in “Spring,” where well as another piece in which four figures silver goblet, its rim festooned with jewels. graceful tree-limbs laden with pink blossoms (three young women and one young man), Lounging dreamily by the seashore in a sway in the breeze against the sooty skyline span four different sized panels that create seashell throne, possibly borrowed from the of Chelsea, and “Summer,” where grass a panoramic photographic vision of Times artist’s distinguished ancestor’s prop attic, and flowers adorn the space between the Square with its lights and billboards blazing. as a lone gull sails through the sea-blue sky, abandoned railroad tracks. Drawn in a supple outline, Michaluk’s figures the regal matron rules over her own private Another bravura painter, Mervyn Beamish have a ghostly quality, seeming to symbolize world. In another canvas called “Intergalactic considers himself “basically a storyteller” the marginalization of the individual in the Communication,” one of the giant stone of places he’s been “in reality and fantasy.” contemporary urban environment. heads from Easter Island and the pyramids are Many of his best paintings depict the Cynthia McCusker creates compositions next door neighbors on the same nocturnal ruddy landscape of inland Australia in a in acrylic on canvas, as well as in the unusual desert, where the stars twinkle above like flying suitably rugged technique akin to the later medium of acrylic on vinyl, in which baroque saucers –– drawing closer, perhaps to deliver neoexpressionist works of Malcolm Morley. abstract forms flow like elegant arabesques. the message that Past and Present make no In Beamish’s oil on linen “Snake Gully,” McCusker is a bold yet subtle colorist, who difference to Eternity. Indeed, Dominick blasted trees do indeed writhe like serpents sometimes shades her shapes to give them the Botticelli’s paintings are filled with intimations against a turbulent sky. By contrast in his volumic presence of objects occupying real of timeless wisdom, but the real message “Pavilion,” the gently curving limbs of lushly space rather than the two dimensions of the resides in their flawless rendering, which does verdant trees provide shade and shelter. picture plane. Although titled “Fluid Cats,” the artist’s heritage proud. Curator Basha Maryanska again one of McCusker’s compositions in acrylic A fashion-designer turned sculptor who demonstrates her impressive versatility on vinyl contains no figurative image of cats, molds clay to the female form, sans the by showing an abstract mixed media but suggests their presence through the feline actual human body, Renée Chase achieves a work called “Going Back,” along with grace of the forms she depicts. strikingly aesthetic semblance of movement another composition titled “Renaissance New York-born artist Trevor Hunter, who and sensuality. Like gorgeous ghosts her Window,” which combines features of her has lived in East Hampton but now lives and gowns stroll the runway of the viewers’ characteristic poetic realism in a thickly works in the Hudson River Valley, close to Continued on page 23 textured nonobjective context. Maryanska is bard College, creates abstract compositions the compleat painter making few distinctions in a mixture of acrylic, oil, and ink, in which Highline Art show, New Century Artists between her abstract and representational he employs an impressive array of mark- Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, styles, trusting to intuition and instinct to making techniques. In “Carnavale (Red),” March 11 - 29, 2014. meld every form and image into a successful he adds collage, employing foil to the mix Reception: Saturday, March 15, 3 - 6 pm.

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 The Domestic Genius of Japanese Quilter Mizuho ost of the prominent woman artists Serve Day” is the following Mwho gravitated to quiltmaking when text: “One this day in 1951, the fiber art movement began to gain traction the Japanese had their first taste in the 1970s started out as painters. Although of soft serve ice cream. It was not all of them were as militant as Judy introduced to them through a Chicago, in the political climate of that era July Fourth celebration hosted many took up needle and thread as a gesture by the post-war occupying of feminist solidarity with those scores of American army in front of the anonymous women who created objects of Meiji Jingu temple.” beauty that were dismissed for centuries by Another piece, embellished art historians as mere domestic handicrafts. with an image of traditional A Japanese woman named Mizuho, ornamental dolls, is called however, came to fiber art from the opposite “Hinamatsuri” and is recalled direction. diaristically, with the happy “It was eight or nine years ago that I memory of a childhood gift started my project of creating a fukin [dish bestowed on March 3rd, which is known in translates in the text for one picture: “Nyan cloth] for each day of the calendar year,” she Japan as “Girl’s Day”: “The Ohinasama dolls nyan nyan. One cry for each two, and with recalls. “It all started with finding myself, my parents bought for me were a beautifully three twos (2/22), this day is Cat Day...” crafted wooden pair. Gazing at Then there is June 9th, “Rock ‘n’ Roll them, in their serenity, would Day,” illustrated with an spike-haired make me feel kind and gentle. musician in a tanktop wielding an electric Displaying Ohinasama dolls is guitar, of which the artist writes “Roku (six) a tradition that took root in the and ku (nine) make rokku, for the rock early Edo period.” in rock ‘n’ roll. The Japan Lock Security Mizuho’s sewn images Association also uses the same pun for lock, have a charming simplicity, and celebrating a lock Day.” somewhere between the folksy Creating an image for June 14, gave neo primitivism of Grandma Mizuho an opportunity to pay tribute to a Moses and the comicbook- fellow seamstress, under the heading “Betsy inspired Pop figuration of Ross Flag”: “In 1777, the thirteen star the Swedish multimedia version of the American flag was adopted. artist Oyvind Fahlstrom. Her The United States’ fiftieth state, and now takes on history are equally fiftieth star, is Hawaii.” diverse. Although it originated And June 15th, Issa Kobayashi’s birthday, in the U.S., the tradition is illustrated with a wonderful illustration of of celebrating May 25th as two cartoon animals wrestling and one of “National Tap Dance Day” that Edo period haiku poet’s more playful apparently really caught on in mini verses: “Scrawny frog / Hang tough!/ Japan. Under a sewn image of Issa is here.” a spry dancer with a cane and Indeed, although not as condensed or musical notes shooting like syllabically strict, the combination of a simple sparks from his shoes, Mizuho’s picture and explanatory text in Mizuho’s enthusiastic text reads: presentation of her pieces calls to mind the “National Tap Dance Day original scroll format, in which the literati celebrates the birthday of the painter/poets of ancient Japan conceived that every day, using a plain kitchen linen to cover king of tapdance, Bill Bojangle Robinson. It most exquisite Japanese art form, haiku. my husband’s dinner sitting on the dining was first presented to the American Congress Also included in the exhibition are some of table, waiting for his late return from work. in September 1988, and signed into law by Mizuho’s larger, more elaborately wrought How unwarm, unwelcoming, uninviting. I President Bush in November 1989. The fiber art pieces, based on traditional themes started thinking to myself how I might leave footwork in this dance requires not only a such as dragonflies hovering above golden my personal mark on that plain store-bought high level of technicality, but an excellent weeds swaying in a gentle breeze; graceful linen.” sense of rhythm.” long necked waterbirds; and ornate umbrellas Along with a large fishing net filled with No event is too minor to be decorated with bright floral patterns. cloth flowers sewn by women who survived commemorated. For January 30, the It is in her delightfully witty calendar the Tsunami in Japan, memorializing its embroidery depicts a bright red telephone, of designs for humble household items, victims, the art that evolved out of Mizuho’s and the text tells us: “On this day in 1970, however, created on plain muslin with needle simple domestic desire to creatively enhance the charge for a local phone call was set at and thread, that this gifted Japanese artist her husband’s dinnertime, will be on view in 10 yen per 3 minutes. It may be hard to / homemaker pays the sincerest tribute to her exhibition at Caelum Gallery in Chelsea. find public pay phones now, but before the anonymous kindred spirits, over centuries and The idea of creating a fukin for each day widespread popularity of the cell phone, across seas, whose simple domestic genius, led her to research significant events that public pay phones were found at every street like her own, has brightened and nurtured occurred on that date, adding a conceptual, corner, some with lines of waiting callers.” countless lives. –– Maureen Flynn diaristic, aspect to her designs. For example, In America, a black cat with an arched back for July 3, the design that she created is a is an automatic semiotic symbol for October simple picture of a Carvel-type ice cream 31. But in Japan the same image evokes Mizuho, Caelum Gallery, 526 West 26th cone, and under a heading saying “Soft February 22 “Cat Day.” Or as Mizuho Street, March 4 - 15, 2014

20 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Renée Borkow: High On the City nlike many artists who appear to hug the picture-plane as Uconsider it a preliminary flatly as the former ones; for here, as medium, most suitable for the wry wit of the title indicates, the sketches and studies for paintings, emphasis is on the two-dimensional the painter and printmaker Renée geometry which opened the door Borkow approaches drawing as to modernism itself. a finished art form. Indeed, in Being a quintessentially Borkow’s hands, color pencils postmodern artist, however, as her become an absolutely painterly equal interest in representation and medium, with gradations of tone formal play makes clear, Borkow defining form and creating tonal feels free to have fun with that patterns as subtle as those in any once sacrosanct space by tilting the work in oil or acrylic. picture plane slightly awry around The epiphany that prompted the edges of the two “foreground” Borkow’s new body of work, structures, so that just the “In the City,” occurred, she smallest suggestion of perspective says, about three and a half years confounds the viewer’s spatial ago: “I was gazing out a ground perception with a twist of Escher. floor window on Columbus The spatial playfulness is taken Avenue, when across the street even further in the aptly titled I saw a very striking image. It “Every Which Way,” where the appeared in front of me as a buildings converge from several horizontal composition in black directions at once in veritable maze and white that was direct, concise of angular juxtapositions. In this and looked like a complete and vertiginous composition, too, the finished painting. In reality, it mostly browns, tans, and ocher was a brick wall shaped like most hues, combined with fewer areas horizontal brick walls with three of similarly subdued green, pay or four bare skinny trees planted tribute to Cubism. and standing directly in front of it. Drawings, Renée Borkow The trees had no leaves, because reiterates “are the main starting of winter. But what I was seeing point for my understanding and was such a beautiful image that appreciation of a subject and I had to draw it immediately. which later can be translated and That was the beginning of the transformed into more abstract idea for my most recent series of images, using other mediums artwork. I continued drawing to create paintings and prints. these cityscapes or environmental However, I also see drawings inspirations in many different “High in the City,” 19"x 26" linoleum block print on arches paper as final and finished art.” And locations throughout the city. I Even more complex for its intricacy is nothing could drive that point didn’t want them to be known or famous “Turtle Bushes 2,” where flurries of colorful across more effectively than this exhibition, tourist attractions or spots. I preferred the less breeze-blown leaves and speckled foliage which will also include black and white block obvious, or even the backs of buildings...” come into play against an even more intricate prints such as “High in the City ” Although Borkow makes it sound background grid of walls and windows. In this dynamic linocut on Arches paper, simple, her compositions are actually quite Here, too, with a fanciful mastery of abstract the bold forms of tree branches, silhouetted complex. “Kaleidoscope,” for one example patterning in a realist context akin to that of buildings, and starkly stylized leaves that is well named; exemplifying the quality David Hockney, Borkow evokes one of those resemble flying crowns, reveal a graphic that the artist calls “flat depth,” wherein pastoral pockets of the city to which harried power approaching that of the Expressionist the contradiction between the illusion of office workers in midtown retire at lunch woodcut master Franz Masereel. But while perspective plays cunningly against the two- hour, as if to a shady, sheltering grove, for a Masereel, who created several wordless dimensions of the picture plane to set off few precious moments of semi-serenity. Here, “novels” in his medium, was primarily a tantalizing pictorial tensions. in particular, we see, “the juxtaposition and narrative artist, Renée Borkow is more The particulars are many: the edge of a combination of geometrical or architectural concerned with aesthetics than storytelling. slate-gray brick wall, entering on the left buildings, combined with the organic and Her recent prints, like her painterly color side of the composition and leading the eye natural lines and shapes of the trees or pencil drawings, are driven by a desire, as she inward, through paler gray slender winter nature,” which Borkow finds fascinating. puts it in her artist statement for the series, to trees, tinged with tones of soft violet, to A more deadpan mode of “abstract capture the “strong contrasts and nuances of a maze of windows, interspersed with the realism,” to appropriate a term coined New York that help maintain the intrigue and touches of the pink, aquamarine, orange and by another writer for this publication, interest of looking at and being in the City.” ocher pastels that modern architects employ comes into play in “From Mondrian’s That she capitalizes that last word indicates to soften the impact of relentlessly climbing Window.” Here, the flat facades of a row of the significance with which she imbues her steel and glass. Yet Borkow melds what, in brownstones, suggesting Hopper’s “Sunday subject. –– Ed McCormack the hands of a lesser artist, could prove a Morning”––sans the atmospheric hangover dauntingly discordant array of urban details of angst––appear sandwiched between the Renée Borkow, Viridian Artists, 548 West into a harmonious composition, possessed of larger rooftops of buildings ostensibly in the 28th Street, March 18–April 5, 2014 remarkable abstract clarity and grace. foreground. The latter buildings, however,

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 Diverse Styles Create Complementary Contrasts oliday group shows are eclectic affairs, (melted wax mixed with pigments) on wood affixes to the bottom of the compositions, Hand the West Side Art Coalition’s “A panels to create glowing compositions that suggesting a liquid void for the words to Gift of Art” was a typical offering, in that it’s tread a fine line between nature studies and splash into. only theme was the presentation of varied abstraction, as seen in “Chinese Meditation,” Jutta Filippelli, whose acrylic paintings have visual pleasures. where a semicircle of tiny red Asian characters evolved from realism to abstraction over the Thus two of the bright puzzle-piece is juxtaposed with a sensuous form suggesting past few years, appears to address the viewer abstractions in Robin Goodstein’s sprightly a succulent halved fruit. directly regarding her stylistic metamorphosis “Yellow Series” shared a wall with Lynn Then there is Joseph Healy, who exhibited with titles such as “As I See It” and “See Lieberman’s fascinatingly detailed watercolors a single, modest-sized work on paper called What You Will.” No explanation is necessary, of upper Manhattan and Central Park. “Two Scholars,” but made a memorable however; for one sees clearly the sheer joy the Although the contrasts in the work of the impression for the sheer complexity of artist takes in creating buoyant gestural forms two above artists were complementary, less a composition in which elements of that float like gaily colored balloons, and the strange bedfellows were Jennifer Lenn’s still photocollage were combined with freeform feeling is contagious. life and interior compositions, such as “The figurative allusions and abrupt shifts of Two final artists make exquisitely formal Blue Room,” with their mellow colors and scale to create a work at once imagistically statements: Gail Atherton with a vertical a light linear touch reminiscent of Raoul compelling and formidable in formal terms. minimalist totem on masonite board and Dufy; and the sophisticated primitive floral Gail Comes also caught our attention with a canvas, in which six simple brown shapes of compositions of Danguole Raudonikiene large monochromatic portrait head in oil on varying sizes appear to float like bubbles up –– particularly the latter’s quaintly surreal canvas entitled “The Silver Knight.” Comes’ five connected panels; Richard Carlson with scene “Windy Evening,” with a white horse work is notable for the artist’s unique way of an equally minimalist acrylic collage in which parked outside a conical cottage and a flying merging bold abstract forms with elements the only element immediately visible from a windmill hovering above. of stylized realism akin to Richard Lindner’s distance is a single blue stripe running across a Adrienne Cosner’s cityscapes in acrylic iconic 1960s figure compositions. solid mustard field. Only after moving closer ranged from the fiery intensity of her acrylic Joseph Boss also made a strong showing can one see the many tactile rectangular forms painting “Red Sky at Night” to the cool, with, “Spilling News,” numbers one and submerged in the mustard ground. deadpan quality of her river scene “St. two, a pair of mixed media collages with Atherton calls her totemic wall relief Petersburg, Russia.” By contrast, both Linda an element of concrete poetry, in which “Goldfish Crackers.” Carlson titles his Lessner’s richly verdant pastel with collage, fragments of type clipped from magazines collage painting “Please Touch.” Who says “Ulster County, Summer” and her oil on spill out of a bucket at the top of the minimalism can’t be witty? canvas “Autumn Grasses,” are possessed of composition spelling out enigmatic phrases, –– Marie R. Pagano a softly poetic quality that derives from her such as “Trust Us, They Are Coated.” As in ability to imbue color with a sense of light. the collages of Kurt Schwitters, the snippets “A Gift of Art 2013,” curated by Linda Lessner Another visual poet, Catherine Silver, of type are combined with tactile elements, recently seen at Broadway Mall Community employs the ancient medium of encaustic such as the lengths of twisted twine that Boss Center, 96th St. (center island). FREE EXPRESSION Continued from page 14 facial features hidden behind her long, lustrous mane, as she holds a bouquet; and an atmospheric vista by Nate Ladson called “The Falls,” previously reviewed in this publication, but worthy of another brief mention here for the grandeur of its composition, reminiscent of a classical Chinese scroll painting, expressing the relative insignificance of humankind next to the magnificent force of nature with ‘It’s not that easy Ladson’s depiction of tiny silhouetted figures being green... standing on a precipice behind a rail, gazing and I think it’s over at a magnificent roaring waterfall. what I want to be.’ –– Maurice Taplinger

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22 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 ED BRODKIN Another powerful painter from Maryland, with a kind of Zen spontaneity and literal Continued from page 1 Kristen Morrison, combines looming representation in his splashily energetic mixed spanning five connected canvas panels. abstract forms, monumental gestures, and media composition “Explosion.” Linear images of figures derived from colors that are at once strong, yet often Robert N. Scott makes a rhythmical Native American iconography are rendered with a softly, subtly muted quality, to make linear statement akin to the British linearly on a contrasting dark ground in compositions possessed of a monumental printmaker Stanley Hayter, with his lyrical various neon-bright red, orange, yellow, quality. Like Rothko before her, albeit with abstraction “Roar of the Sea. In “Hand and aquamarine hues, as though squeezed a generally more vibrant palette, one of the of the Artist” and “Mask,” Joseph Healy straight from the tube. The indigenous primary elements influencing her colors is reveals a sophisticated Art Brut sensibility ala figures are overlapped to create an abstract light, which she endeavors to capture from Dubuffet, albeit with his own vibrant take on “action painting,” akin for its effect of various perspectives, stating, “The same light color and collage. Along with his visual wit, spontaneity to the French “l’art informel” is perceived differently according to where Healy has a talent for formal arrangement Georges Mathieu––albeit with a deliberate one stands. For instance, a beam of light that most clearly comes across in the latter conceptual control characteristic of Brodkin. across the bow of a boat in a heavy fog is work. Gifted with a strong approach to Then there is “Cycles of Life, The Long different from the same pulse seen from the abstraction Dorethea T. Scott weaves the Pond,” an acrylic painting ranging over shoreline.” colors of the Pan-African flag through her twelve connected canvases, interpreting the Morrison, however, incorporates such abstract pastel, “Greenhouse,” lending its four seasons on Greenwood Lake. Here, the subtleties of light as it affects color detached title a symbolic meaning. Scott also applies artist’s gifts as a colorist would tempt one to from specific subject matter in paintings those hues effectively in another emblematic classify him as a latter-day Luminist, if not for with an impressive abstract presence. One abstraction she calls “Grotto.” Then there is the overall versatility of his oeuvre. might be tempted to describe the forms Barry Friedfertig, whose abstract paintings, For unlike less inventive artists, who she employs as “Minimalist,” if not for aside from the tactile sensuousness they all cultivate a signature manner and promote their dynamic soft-edged expressiveness (as share, vary greatly stylistically, as though in it like a corporate logo, for Ed Brodkin true opposed to hard-edged precision), as well as a deliberate attempt to evade classification. style is a function of individual character that the often geometric but hardly symmetrical Friedfertig, however, seems to tip his enables one to start anew each day and set character of her forms. In her large acrylic conceptual hand with the work titled, “This forth like an explorer, confident that each on board “Sing,” for example, a large, is not a painting,” consisting of that sentence aesthetic adventure will lead to a fruitful bulbous blue form swoops in from the top printed out boldly in red with a brush on a discovery. –– Ed McCormack of the composition like an oddly dark cloud. textured black background in a manner that, And below it is a thinner, more linear area like his other works in the show, can only be FLORA JACOBSON of aquamarine of varying width, which called “painterly.” –– Marie R. Pagano Continued from page 2 hangs like a hammock. Both are set against success in black and white checkerboard more muted ocher and gray areas of color. NEW CENTURY ARTISTS patterns is set amid fragmentary clippings A brighter ocher line running across the Continued from page 19 of ad topography and newspaper text that composition toward the bottom, one could imagination. Indeed, this must be how morph magically into buildings, signs, and almost suggest a horizon line. However, fashion designers imagine their clothes before passing traffic, evoking the hustle and bustle all distinctions between figure and ground they come into being, as though the artist is of lunch hour in midtown Manhattan. relationships are obliterated in Morrison’s letting us in on a trade secret that enhances Such panache is characteristic of Flora tough-minded aesthetic. Indeed, although our appreciation not only of the female Jacobson’s insouciant aesthetic alchemy, in she may use natural references when referring form eternal, but of how couture accents its which the simplest everyday materials that to “color as light,” to borrow the apt term attributes. can be purchased in the stationery and school that Ruskin applied to Turner, Morrison To say of Chase’s creations that they take supply section of your nearest Duane Reade obviously takes pains to prevent the viewer the shape of slinky sirens is to confirm that drugstore –– ink, glue, watercolors and from “Rorshaching” landscape imagery into she has succeeded splendidly in realizing her various felt-tip markers –– are employed with her compositions. stated aesthetic goal: “to infuse each sculpture offhand skill to create works possessed of their She discourages them in a painting called with form and motion as if there was a body own unique elegance. ––Ed McCormack “Sing Sing Sing,” by filling the top of the within it.” composition with a big red rectangle unlike Another contemporary sculptor who AWAKENING anything that exists in nature; and does so glorifies the human anatomy, both in clay Continued from page 9 in another painting––perhaps pointedly, or and wire mesh is Bonnie Shanas, who gestural style calls to mind another member even ironically––entitled “Art,” (as in “art for considers herself lucky to have studied the of the New York School: Robert de Niro, Sr., its own sake”). In both works, the apparent latter medium under the renowned Israeli late father of the well known actor. Similarly message is that a painting is a distinct and sculptor Shulamit Hartal. Indeed, Shanas generalized, yet possessed of individuality discrete entity unto itself and not metaphor has the alchemical ability to lend wire mesh nonetheless are the three figures in another for, or symbol of, anything else. And by the sense of living flesh, as seen in her canvas entitled “Group Dynamics.” Working virtue of her painterly conviction, Kristen lifelike male torso, “Within My Fort.” Even mainly in line, with key patches of color, Morrison makes this idea impressively more remarkable, however, than her skill in applied with characteristic vigor, to knit the credible. –– Byron Coleman rendering male musculature in this unyielding composition together at key points, Weiner- industrial material is Shanas’ gift for making Reed employs the linear technique to suggest WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION it evoke the softer suppleness and curves of the physical and emotional connections, as Continued from page 15 the female body, as seen in “Just Me,” an well as the inevitable psychological tensions, gestural elements and a meticulously painted apparent self-portrait, in which Shanas gives of family life to which title alludes. Equally image of a globe. However, Mead’s inclusion her own nude torso the feline grace of the formidable in a more formal but no less of fragments of her familiar linear figuration famous 1950s calendar photo of Marilyn intense manner are Weiner-Reed’s purely in some areas of the composition suggest Monroe. Here, as in other female nudes, abstract compositions, such as “Vision that she may be trying out contexts for a such as “Redemption” and “Her Own Quest,” amd“Unraveling Mysteries” in stylistic melding of older and new imagery. Time,” Shanas achieves the aesthetic alchemy which she takes on more inner-directed Meanwhile, Nate Ladson finds a novel of molding an incongruous material to an subjects and metaphysical concerns. approach to merging gestural abstraction unlikely subject. –– Maurice Taplinger

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 Dellamarie Parrilli’s Tribute to an Adopted City here has never been a shortage scroll painting, within some of her Tof topnotch contemporary luminously transparent acrylic cubes. women painters in Los Angeles: A more familiar facet of this versatile Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, and artist’s ever expanding oeuvre –– at least Deborah Remington come most to her long-term critical champions immediately to mind. But many and collectors –– can be seen in others emerged from or migrated Parrilli’s recent acrylic paintings on to that sprawling, sun-splashed city canvas. These also untitled large-scale where palm trees alternate with compositions, ranging from 72 by 60 stop lights, and there has always inches upwards to 72 by 108 inches, been a lively art scene. absorb and update the entire coloristic Recently, when Dellamarie and tactile vocabulary of Abstract Parrilli decided to leave Chicago, Expressionism for the postmodern where she was born and made era on the scale to which it has the her initial reputation, to join their most impact. One such work employs distinguished company, she created muscular juicy pink red, blue, and a series of untitled works inspired white strokes broad enough to have by L.A. been painted with a broom rather than Executed in acrylic on canvas, with an ordinary brush. They swerve, polycarbon on acrylic cubes, and swirl and interlock dynamically in thick the unusual medium of watercolor coloristically variegated areas of heavy on canvas, these works are impasto with an energy akin to de among her most exuberant and Kooning. accomplished to date. The latter In another, even larger acrylic on paintings in watercolor a good canvas, Parrilli adopts a more linear, place to start. These compositions calligraphic manner in which the are much larger in scale than discerning eye can catch glimpses of most works in the medium, since actual alphabet letters, albeit fluidly watercolor paper 72 by 60 inches is Watercolor and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 inches distorted beyond easy legibility. These difficult to find (unless, like Charles purple hues rippling out from large circular linear shapes are laid down in white Burchfield, one wishes to paste several smaller and semicircular shapes in a manner that pigment against underscrawls of blue ecriture sheets of handmade Arches together –– a creates the illusion that the pools of diluted that glow against an overall deep crimson- process that creates seams, which would aquarelle are still in active motion. Indeed purple ground, like palimpsests in a gigantic interrupt the flow of Parrilli’s massive abstract the entire series is characterized by a sense of manuscript. In yet another composition, forms). flux, of the graceful movement of filmy veils primarily in pale pink and bright blue hues, in Beyond all technical and practical of color dancing on the picture plane, its two- the same series, Parrilli combines acrylics and considerations, however, these works dimensional flatness opened up and imbued watercolors on canvas, playing off the thick, possess a unique luminosity, abetted by a with a sense of depth by Parrilli’s multilayered craggy consistency of the former medium combination of majestic scale, chromatic approach to washes of vibrant color. against the loosely flowing and vertically subtlety and tonal delicacy that eludes even By contrast her works in polycarbon dripping liquidity of the latter one to achieve “poured paint” Color Field painters like on acrylic –– and particularly on three striking textural contrasts. Helen Frankenthaler, Paul Jenkins, and dimensional acrylic cubes –– enable her Equally engaging tactile qualities of Morris Louis. Among them, the composition to work in literal depth, merging painting another kind capture one’s attention in a that appears to allude most specifically to the and sculpture in her own unique manner. large acrylic painting in horizontal format qualities of Los Angeles that attracted Parrilli As opposed to the airy amorphousness of (relatively rare for Parrilli, who works more to relocate there is a very large untitled her compositions in watercolor on canvas often on vertical canvases), fully 96 inches watercolor and acrylic on canvas with a –– which give the impression of having wide. A predominantly deep pink ground, fiery red orb dominating the center of its been created with a brush dipped in liquid densely embellished with red, blue, and composition, flanked by semitranslucent light –– here Parrilli solidifies her forms yellow spatters, drips and strokes, is overlaid sinuously graceful green shapes suggesting and brightens her color areas in a manner with a buoyant linear dance of thin white that floating floral forms. akin to the harder edges of the designs in a the artists tosses out like lariats. Although Parrilli considers herself a direct mandala. The opacity of these more definitely Here, again, the graceful movement of descendent of the Abstract Expressionists, defined forms plays off exquisitely against the these linear elements can only be said to as well as of Kandinsky and other pioneers translucent but “hard” sheen of the acrylic resemble a form of terpsichore. And one is of nonobjective painting, and rarely allows boxes. The effect is as quasi “industrial” reminded that Parrilli was a dancer and a recognizable subject matter to invade her as Billy Al Bengston’s highly finished singer, before a life threatening illness aborted formal lexicon, this composition evokes a emblematic compositions spray-painted in her entertainment career –– biographical sense of tropical heat and organic growth, enamel on aluminum, inspired by the Los information is only relevant because of the with its hot red and orange emanations of Angeles Custom Car Culture. Here, too, in bearing it has on the energy and grace that light-filled hues, and its clumps of white a moment of pure inspiration (apparently she brings to her visual art. speckles suggesting tiny white flowers, all taking poetic license from Walt Whitman’s Indeed, Dellamarie Parrilli is still very seeming to emanate from the solar mass at its famous lines: “Do I contradict myself? Very much of a dancer. –– Ed McCormack center. well, I contradict myself!”), Parrilli departs Other large watercolors on canvas in the from her usual adamantly abstract stance, To see more of Dellamarie Parrilli’s works, same series employ a dynamic “wet into wet” encasing holographic-looking images of tiny go to www.parrilli.com technique to send liquidic areas of blue and birds, as delicate as those in a classic Chinese

24 GALLERY&STUDIO February/March 2014 Recently Seen

Artists: Kathryn Hart, Eva Lachur, Basha Maryanska, Kristen Morrison, Joseph Palmerio, Elaine Weiner-Reed, Veryal Zimmerman

February/March 2014 GALLERY&STUDIO