GALLERY&STUDIOGALLERY&STUDIOVOL. 7 NO. 3 FEBRUARY-MARCH 2005 New York

Taking the new de Kooning bio personally p. 20 Philip S Drill SCULPTURE “Nature’s Rhythm”

March 1 - 25, 2005 “Interiors ll” 13 1/2" x 18" 23" Cast Glass Photo: Eva Heyd

Gallery Hours: 9:00am to 4:00pm Mon-Fri 1 - National League of American Pen Women “ARTS VENTURES” February 1 - 25, 2005 Reception: Thursday, February 3, 2005, 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Oly Dias • Mirel Bercovici • Eleanor Capogrosso Rebecca Cooperman • Sonia Grinaeva • Rose Craney Arlene Palitz • Sheya Lederman • Marcia Ostwind Estelle Levy • Jeanette Martone • Phyllis Flower Elvira Dimetry • Claire Clark • Emily Mehling Christine Nelson • Magdalena Nemesh MamaevaTetiana • Laura Schiavina • Larissa Tormakov Marion Wills • Grace Chin • Adrienne Goldberg Saskia Sutherland • Arlene Egelberg

Gallery Hours: 9:00am to 4:00pm Mon-Fri

GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Dorothy A. Culpepper

Recent Paintings

Attack of the June Bugs

March 29 - April 16, 2005 G&S Highlights

On the Cover: The new de Kooning biography is not only definitive but made for Hollywood. A former painter of fake de Koonings muses on the great man’s career and casts the movie. –Page 18 Cover photo: Walt Silver, courtesy of Walt Silver Philip S. Drill, pg. 15 Kathleen King, pg. 29

Deborah Lee Galesi, pg. 4

LiQin Tan, pg. 31

Ed Brodkin, pg. 7

Julio Aguilera, pg. 17

Danièle M. Marin, pg. 5 GALLERY&STUDIO An International Art Journal PUBLISHED BY © EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2005 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Juliet M. Ross Erma Yost, pg. 9 Irving Barrett, pg. 11 Charles Murphy, pg. 8 2 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Hart and Victor at CFM: A Rebirth of Passion hile his humanis- a series of oils on can- Wtic neoclassical vas inspired by “The sculpture was never Divine Comedy,” embraced by art world Dante’s fourteenth fashionistas during his century poetic master- lifetime, Frederick piece describing his Hart, whose work is own imaginary journey paired with that of the through the afterlife, gifted young French which is concerned Canadian sculptor with three aspects of Daniel Victor in the the world beyond: the exhibition Inferno (Hell), the “Metamorphosis and Purgatorio the Human (Purgatory), and the Condition” from Paradiso (Heaven). March 5 through April Utilizing dancers as 3, at CFM Gallery, 112 models, Victor imbues Greene Street , never his figures with classical wanted for recognition. proportions––even His monumental those that writhe in “Creation” frieze of contorted positions in stone figures on the the purgatorial part of facade of the Daniel Victor, from the “Divine Comedy” (Purgatory) the exhibition, their Washington National tormented faces shad- Cathedral and his larger than life bronze and the erotic also animates many of the fig- owed with cracks like those in ancient sculp- “Three Soldiers” at the Vietnam Veterans ures in the present exhibition at CFM ture, their exquisitely articulated fingers Memorial both established him as an artist Gallery, whose intrepid director Neil clawing the sulphureous air. whose work will endure long after many of Zukerman has long been one of Hart’s The raw power of these paintings is today’s hot trends are mere footnotes in the most vociferous champions, bucking the enhanced by Neil Zukerman’s decision to fickle history of postmodernism. trends in Soho to bring him to the attention exhibit them unstretched and unframed, Further evidence of the growing recogni- of the New York art world for several years. which complements Victor’s technique of tion of Hart’s contribution came last year By juxtaposing Hart’s work with that of combining figurative imagery with darkly when he was honored with the 2004 Daniel Victor, a relative neophyte with the evocative veils of flowing oil washes and National Medal of the Arts, the highest gallery (although he has exhibited widely in drips akin to the gestural pyrotechnics of award given to artists and arts patrons by his native Canada), Zukerman makes the abstract expressionism. While this rough- the United States Government. Awarded by point that neoclassical art need not be rele- hewn presentation is unprecedented for a the president through a selection process gated to the past or even placed in opposi- gallery known for its elegance, it lends overseen by the National Council on the tion to prevailing trends; that it is an adven- Victor’s paintings an impact comparable to Arts , in previous years the honor has gone turous and vital element of the mainstream, Leon Golub’s huge unstretched canvases of to major figures such as Marian Anderson, in which established masters and emerging mercenaries and atrocities. Saul Bellow, and Willem de Kooning. (It talents can share the same stage and comple- Unlike Golub, however, Victor is no was one of the few official honors that de ment each other. social realist; rather he is a latter-day Kooning, always wary of the establishment, Indeed, it can be argued that Frederick Symbolist of the highest order, as seen in his took seriously.) Hart is the least traditional of the two artists large vertical composition “Allegoria,” Hart’s nomination (the first to occur in terms of his pioneering work in the medi- which while not part of “The Divine posthumously) was especially significant in um of clear lucite. Several of these sculp- Comedy” series is one of the highlights of that he now joins the ranks of past recipients tures, in which sensual female nudes are the exhibition. Here, Victor approaches the in the visual arts such as Chuck Close, Roy realized in three dimensions as well as Symbolist mastery of Gustave Moreau with Lichtenstein, Isamu Noguchi, Robert appearing in more ethereal form within the a mythical vision in which an angelic male Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell and crystalline material, are highlights of the figure with majestic white wings and a Jasper Johns––all avant gardists in whose exhibition. For it is in these works that Hart dancer’s physique is poised gracefully above company this writer has always argued that has fused the earthly and the transcendent two unicorns with entwined serpentine tails he belonged. For while writers and critics in a manner previously unseen in the Judao- levitating against a dark ground enlivened with a conservative agenda have tried to Christian tradition. Taken together with his by luminous vertical streaks as atmospheric claim Hart as one of their own, he has never more classical bronzes, such as the stately as the mists of Avalon. been a conservative artist. As I have noted robed figure called “The Source” and the In this major work, especially, we see the in past reviews, nothing could be more radi- male and female nudes titled simply curatorial logic of exhibiting Daniel Victor cal than Hart’s synthesis of the sensual and “Torso,” these luminous sculptures consti- together with Frederick Hart. For both the spiritual. This synthesis is most startling tute an oeuvre unlike anything else in con- Hart and Victor take enormous risks, flying in the context of his stone sculptures of temporary art and place Hart in the fore- in the face of the timidity that makes so male and female nudes for the National front of the New Humanism. many of their contemporaries hedge their Cathedral, some modeled on his beautiful Although Daniel Victor, who was born in bets with self protective irony, gladly ventur- wife Lindy Hart (who accepted the award 1964 and lives and works outside Montreal, ing “over the top,” as they say, in order to for her late husband in an oval office cere- has been included in previous group exhibi- make the human figure once again a vehicle mony with President George W. and Laura tions at CFM Gallery, this joint exhibition for heroic passion. Bush). with Hart is his first major show in New ––Ed McCormack However, Hart’s marriage of the exalted York. And he acquits himself admirably with FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 Deborah Lee Galesi’s New Age Vision of Renaissance Aesthetics

he New Jersey-born painter Deborah a realist that allow her to travel so exten- gift for intuitive pictorial organization. TLee Galesi, whose solo exhibition fills sively in imaginative realms, making paint- In the painting entitled “Medicine the entire space of Montserrat Gallery, 584 ings that defy all the laws of logic yet still Wheel,” Galesi employs the format of a Broadway, from March 8 to 26, and will manage to project a unique emotional mandala as the organizing principle of the also be featured year-round in the gallery’s power. There appears to be no image that composition. Within its central circle ongoing salon show when it relocates to Galesi will not dare commit to canvas. Her (ornately bordered by stylized ocean waves Chelsea in the coming months, flies in the technical ability enables her to take risks ala Japanese prints and pink silhouettes of face of everything that is sacred in contem- that would daunt a less proficient, not to the leaping dolphins that are a recurring porary figurative art by trusting totally to mention less intrepid, painter. Take, for motif of her work), she includes sequential her imagination as impetus for her imagery. example, the subject of her painting images of sorceresses, angels, and other Which is to say, she eschews commercial “Metamorphosis of Atlantis” in which sea ethereal beings of light in enchanted land- strategies such as the irony that many creatures take flight on butterfly wings scape settings. The painting reflects her young artists employ self pro- interest in New Age and meta- tectively, and by doing so physical disciplines. Her eso- runs the risk of appearing teric studies provide her with unhip, for all her obvious many diverse symbols, which draftspersonly abilities and she often combines in her painterly skills. work, freely intertwining Galesi, however, is obvi- aspects of Christianity, ously too committed to her Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism own personal vision to fret and other religious paths to over fleeting fashions, and suggest a universal spirituality. one need only glance at her Even more down to earth resume to see that she is well subjects are treated in a man- trained: She holds an MFA in ner so imaginatively as to art and psychology from the transform them into visionary University of Colorado and statements, as seen in Galesi’s has also studied privately in oil on linen “Nostalgia.” New York with instructors Here, the figure of an elderly from The Art Students man dominates the center of League, as well as at the the composition. Wearing a Villas Schifanoia and the short sleeved white sport shirt Liceo Artistic in Florence, and gray slacks, he sits hand- Italy, where she is highly to-cheek, in a manner reminis- regarded as a member of the cent of Rodin’s “The Professional Register of Thinker,” except that his legs European artists. are more casually crossed. Not only has Florence Over him is superimposed the been good to her, in terms of semi-transparent form of a rewarding her talent with large blue butterfly, and over recognition, it appears to his head, under a rainbow arch have become a kind of spiri- reminiscent of certain tual home for Galesi, who Renaissance icon formats, vari- has been fascinated with the ous images are seen in a Renaissance ever since she sequential frieze. They show a was a child. child growing into an adoles- Nowhere could probably cent and then a young man seem farther from the glories, and finally a mature adult both architectural and artis- while holding what appears to tic, of the Renaissance, than be a caterpillar in the stages of Paterson, New Jersey, where transformation into a butterfly. Deborah Lee Galesi grew up. The painting, executed in a Yet, that typical American “Nostalgia” classically realized style behold- river town has its own unique artistic histo- amid similarly airborne uprooted trees and en to the Old Masters, yet employing ry, having been immortalized in a great a dolphin balances a glowing golden orb imagery with a postmodern freedom that poem called “Paterson” by William Carlos that could be the sun on its nose like a cir- also harks back to the surrealists, is Williams. And it could almost appear that cus seal, amid other unnatural wonders illu- informed by her admiration for both Galesi picked up, perhaps by osmosis, some minated by a neon-pink sky. Like Malcolm Michelangelo and Salvador Dali. However, of Williams’ belief in particulars, rather than Morley in his post-photo realist fantastic “Nostalgia” makes a deeply personal and vague generalities, as the only valid building expressionist phrase, Deborah L. Galesi highly original statement about memory blocks of art, given the attention that she seemingly pushes the imagistic envelope as and metamorphosis, the cycles of life, the lavishes on detail in her paintings, approxi- far as it can possibly go in some of her specter of mortality, and the hopeful mating the actual appearance of specific more surreal and jam-packed compositions. prospect of renewal and rebirth in a manner things to lend even her most unlikely flights Yet she invariably accomplishes the consid- that is pure Deborah Lee Galesi. of fantasy a stunning verisimilitude. erable feat of making all of her disparate ––Maurice Taplinger Indeed, it is Galesi’s consummate skills as images blend harmoniously by virtue of her

4 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Danièle M. Marin Gives Voice to “Womanity”

nce upon a time, popular wisdom ant new face on the shrouds and Ohad it that men had Ideas and veils, both figurative and literal, that women had notions. Before the dawn- have obscured the true attributes of ing of the feminist era it was not women for so long. Thus the three uncommon to hear locutions such as draped forms, though of modest “That silly woman had a notion to run scale, appear to loom monolithically, for Congress.” Could this be why those like huge monuments to those liter- frills, fringes, ruffles, tassels, and other ary women who always refused to let embellishments used in sewing original- their voices be stifled. ly came to be named notions: to drive The face of Simone de Beauvoir home the idea that women’s thoughts appears once again in a mixed media and expressions were mere whims and painting “Voices & Images,” super- fancies, decorative afterthoughts added imposed on a dress dummy in a to the overall fabric of life? beautifully organized still life compo- In any case, when Danièle M. Marin, sition that demonstrates Marin’s tra- an artist recently chosen for inclusion in ditional skills as a painter, which are the 2005 Florence Biennale, incorpo- formidable. Indeed, while installa- rates notions into her mixed media tions dominated her earlier exhibi- paintings, they resonate with a sense of tions, Marin’s painterly abilities the way women have been marginal- come to the forefront in this show. ized in life and in art. They are at once In another mixed media painting poignant reminders and powerful sym- called “Confluent Realities,” a mys- bols, showing how a gifted woman terious figure partially obscured by artist can use the very trifles of her an ajar purple door slumps in an easy oppression to turn the tables in power- chair like Marat in his bathtub, in a ful works of art. room where a blank TV screen Indeed, Danièle M. Marin ennobles blazes brightly and the intricate pat- the full range of womanly activity, from terns of the wallpaper turn out, on needle crafts to literature in her exhibi- “Voices and Images” closer inspection, to be penciled tion “Converging Realities: Realities show- on a nearby pedestal that has been tightly texts torn into many tiny pieces. room of women voices,” which ran through bound with string. Here, the scene is evoked with a seamless January 29 at Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th This multifaceted installation hints at a classical solidity akin to Balthus, while in Street. multitude of meanings, none spelled out in another mixed media painting, intriguingly Perhaps the direct and witty example of any obvious way. Like all of Marin’s work, titled “Letter to Colette or Tending the turnabout-as-fair-play in the show can be “Knitting Installation” raises questions Garden,” Marin combines charcoal, acrylic, seen in “Vice Versa,” a kind of male odal- through the artist’s metaphoric juxtaposi- fibers, collage, and etching to create a com- isque in the unusual medium of acrylic and tions of materials and images. Here, one is position with a scrawled gestural ecriture as knitting. The subject of this painting is a compelled to ponder issues of shame and vigorous as a Twombly. Disparate as their middle aged man seated with one leg folded self-censorship as they relate to literary techniques may be, however, both paintings beneath him and one arm resting on the women down through the centuries. Even are unified by the conceptual sensibility that other knee. Although he is distinguished- though the installation does not refer to enables Marin to range far and wide stylisti- looking enough with his thinning but well Emily Dickinson directly, its minute hand- cally while retaining the consistency of a rec- groomed white hair, he is incongruously writing and other elements invite one to ognizable oeuvre. nude, as women have been captured for consider once again the kind of societal con- Other highlights were three paintings of many centuries in art by The Male Gaze. ditioning that made a transcendent genius female nudes mounted on silky padded Set against a brilliant red ground and sur- so diffident about her life’s work that she clothes hangers; symbolic portraits of rounded by a frame of red fringe, the naked sewed her poems into little booklets and hid Colette, de Beauvoir, and Duras in which gentleman is displayed like a trophy of the them away in a desk drawer, where they Marin’s ubiquitous dress forms, surrounded sexual revolution! remained until being discovered after her by a sea of folded fabric, took on a presence A more subtle and complex statement on death by her sister Lavinia and liberated for as surreal as di Chirico’s pittura metafisica the evolution of women in society was the ages. It is women’s victories, such as the mannequins; and an installation of small, expressed in “Knitting Installation: fact that Dickinson ultimately triumphed exquisite mixed media works in ornate MP/Reading becomes Writing, becomes over a domineering anti-sufferagist father Renaissance frames called “Formulation of a Speaking Body/5'7" and growing taller.” In who had written newspaper articles con- Question” that a savvy collector snatched up this mixed media installation, a medium in demning any feminine ambition beyond almost as soon as the show opened. which Marin has created some of the most providing domestic comfort for men, that It was characteristic of Danièle M. Marin’s intriguing works, the piece de resistance is a the work of Danièle M. Marin Celebrates. wit to title her exhibition a “showroom”–– long, scroll-like configuration that hangs And not all of the women that Marin cel- a term evoking images of those glitzy ven- from the wall, created with many painstak- ebrates are diffident by any means. Three ues in the garment district where manufac- ingly interwoven strips of fiber on which the notoriously outspoken French women writ- turers display their goods on the bodies of artist has written in pencil in a minuscule ers (Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and young women who function as mute, ani- script. The bottom of the scroll unwinds Marguerite Duras) are featured in mated dress dummies–– and then to add the into a pile of earth on the floor, while an “Unfolding,” their formidable likenesses sly qualifying phrase “of women voices.” even longer thread, its entire length printed by photo-transfer on cloth draped Surely, Marin herself is one of the most elo- inscribed with tiny penciled words, unravels over miniature dress forms and enclosed in a quent of those voices. from the top into a red composition book plexiglass vitrine as though to impose a defi- ––Ed McCormack

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 Frank Perna: Blood and Gore on the Trading Floor ne of the more amusing protest pranks tive ecstasy and collective insanity.” “Stockrave,” white shirted men wave their Oof the late 1960s was when the Yippee That all of the paintings are of uniform arms above their heads against the back- activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin size (approximately twelve by sixteen inches) drop of a “Big Board” on which their for- smuggled a big bag of dollar bills up to the lends the series the feeling of stills from a tunes are being tallied. Theirs is a different balcony of the The New York Stock film in which the action grows ever more kind of jubilation, like that of holy roller Exchange and emptied it down on the trad- frantic. The severe cropping of Perna’s com- religious fanatics in the ecstatic throes of ing floor to watch the positions adds to the sus- some rubber-limbed trance dance. traders below scurry and pense and almost unbear- Other compositions with titles like “Just a shove like hogs at the able tension, while the blur- Bit,” “Flux,” and “Betwixt,” focus just as trough. (And scurry and ring of the forms in some expressively on gesturing hands, computer shove they certainly did, enhances the sense of fre- monitors, sweaty, wrinkled white shirts, and according to the news netic, fast-paced activity. Yet other close-up imagery laden with deadpan reports from that time!) the images can be even symbolism. The smooth, impassive paint One was reminded of more disconcerting when surface only adds to the taut power of that frantic scene recently Perna shifts into sharp Perna’s images. Perna’s technique of blur- on encountering the focus. In one such picture ring forms and slightly heightening colors paintings of Frank Perna, “Blue Bit,” for example, lends his reds, especially, the quality of wetly an artist from Toronto, men with rumpled fore- glistening viscera. His style seems to marry Ontario, whose solo exhi- heads, screwed-shut eyes, the slightly off-kilter photorealism of bition “Money Trails II” and gaping mouths pump Gerhard Richter to the grotesque emotional can be seen at Noho their fists in the air like riot- dissonance of Francis Bacon (sans the gross Gallery, 530 West 25th ing British football hooli- distortion) without skipping a beat. Street, from March 15 gans or punk rock fans in a A continuation of his “Obsession” series, through April 2. mosh pit. Although their in which blurred images of figurative tro- Perna paints scenes hyena-like demeanors seem phies explored “visual perception and mate- “Blue Bit” from international stock to signify violence, one can rialistic chaos,” this new series, according to exchange floors, capturing the frenzy that only assume that they are jubilant at an the artist, demonstrates how popular media reigns even when paper money is not flut- upturn in the market. It is an ambiguity “can make the most banal subject into a tering down from the balcony like manna familiar to anyone who makes a careful sensual abstraction.” However, Frank Perna from Heaven. He refers to these images, study of media news imagery, in which the makes an even more profound statement in culled from photojournalistic sources and semiotics of rage and joy are often indistin- “Money Trails II” about the naked greed painted in oil on wood in an accomplished guishable. that drives the global economy. Pop/realist style, as “crowd scenes of collec- In another painting by Perna called ––Ed McCormack WSAC Photography Exhibition Evokes a Sense of Place espite its title, “Places I’ll Remember,” shadow. Weingarten brings the same drafts- ty. Kuhn also fools the eye with dynamic Da recent photo show curated for the manly eye to another dark, dramatic black images of towering New York apartment West Side Arts Coalition by David Ruskin and white print of clouds collecting over buildings shot from angles that turn them and Jennifer Holst and seen at Broadway silhouetted weeds and foliage. Belle Marie into surreal terrains where air conditioners Mall Community Center, on the center Prudhomme, on the other hand, creates and window plants appear to be oddly island at 96th Street and Broadway, was by color prints that have a narrative quality, like shaped natural structures and foliage. Yet no means a mere exercise in nostalgia. stills from some intriguing documentary another artist who makes less more, Irina Rather, it was a sharply focused survey of film. In one of Prudhomme’s pictures, an Taflan turns the unforgiving landscape of recent photographic trends. elderly woman, her eyes shut in reverie, the Arizona desert, with its scrubby plant Co-curator Ruskin, for example, repre- plays a zither in the courtyard of a Seattle life and ruddy rocks, into near abstract com- sents the New Romanticism with handcol- cafe, surrounded by empty tables. positions as compact and intense as the ored prints, which impart the same enchant- Steve Weintraub’s digital photographs also paintings of Marsden Hartley. In one of ed quality to Central Park as to Tuscany, have a storytelling quality, with scenes of Taflan’s most striking color prints, a red Italy. Ruskin’s delicate yet luminous tints desolate Americana awash in strident fluo- folding chair, hints at a human presence just lend every subject a verdant poetry, be it of rescent hues. Neon skies and conspicuously outside the picture area. hills in Tuscany kissed by pink light or stone displayed flags and gothic barns reveal a sur- An exceptionally painterly photographer, steps in Central Park carpeted in golden real sensibility akin to that of the film maker Robert Helman showed lush color prints autumn leaves. David Lynch in Weintraub’s eerie prints. By evoking autumn woods and other vibrant Khuumba Ama invests her pictures of a contrast, Carol Carpentieri turns simple scenes in Central Park, Delaware and Staten village in Senegal, Africa, with the emotional images of a white swan on a lake into icono- island. Then there was Jean Prytyskacz, a power of an African-American artist discov- graphic statements in her small color prints frequent WSAC exhibitor, whose energetic ering her ancestral roots. Village children, surrounded by large mats that highlight color prints of crowds at a feast in Little women in queenly garb, and even gnarled their cameo quality. Carpentieri’s pictures Italy and other outdoor festivals and events old trees are chronicled by Ama in warm are at once lyrical and formal––little gems were among the most lively––not to men- scenes that capture the spirit of a long- that provide visual poetry and strong design tion most populated–– pictures in a show awaited journey home. in equal measure. leaning heavily toward landscape. Scott Weingarten’s silver gelatin print of Also intimate in scale but large in ambi- surf and sand on a nocturnal beach is a tri- tion, the color prints of Irmgard Kuhn cele- ––Marie R. Pagano umph of subtly modulated monochromes brate the pastoral beauty of Parks in New and tonal contrasts “drawn” with light and York and Germany with savvy and sensitivi- 6 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Being Ed Brodkin: The View from Inside t would undoubtedly be fascinating to be pigment on a dark ground, are paradoxically scroll/sculpture looming out from the wall Iinside Ed Brodkin’s brain. One imagines possessed of a gestural velocity signifying in three dimensions. Moving closer, the all sorts of crawl spaces in there, like the deadly violence. And as always in Brodkin’s viewer realizes that the 3-D effect is illusory, ones inside the head of the famous actor in work, the image reverberates far beyond the accomplished with the artist’s skillful under- the film “Being John Malkovich” (only relatively small wars of indiginous peoples, shadowing of a perfectly flat panel, but now more intricate and maze-like in the manner expanding to encompass global conflict and more intimate pleasures reward close scruti- of an Escher print). There would probably inviting us to meditate on the folly of, as the ny of a painted surface of delicate pastel be many hidden chambers containing vit- artist himself puts it, “our species more gen- hues as subtly modulated as one of Walter rines and cabinets filled with untranslatable erally.” Darby Bannard’s color fields, albeit documents, arcane alphabets, and “primi- “Helios,” another highlight of the show–– enlivened by barely legible word-bursts tive” (Brodkin invariably encloses the word its central form a painted image of the sun relating to the interminable mystery of time. in pointed quote marks) implements from encircled by brilliant swirls of color ––would Other new works by Ed Brodkin, such vanished tribes and cultures. All the corri- be a tondo, if not for the ancient sun sym- as “Quanta II,” “36 Stars,” and dors in this place would finally lead to one bols, culled from various indiginous sources, “Anticipation,” allude to a diverse range of vast laboratory cum workshop where eso- that Brodkin has cut away from the round subjects, from the Fibonnaci sequence to teric notions ranging from ancient alchemi- rim of the composition. Thus, the white of earthquakes; from the symbols indigenous cal formulas to the latest theories of quan- the gallery wall enters and becomes an inte- peoples used to chart the cosmos in the tum physics are perpetually in the context of a modern man’s medi- process of being transformed into tation on the night sky; to the physical objects of aesthetic delecta- way in which we all wait, in one tion. Here, one imagines, the meta- way or another, for some form of physical being systematically con- enlightenment––or simply to be verted into the physical, the impos- rescued from the increasingly sible into the actual, the metaphori- complex circumstances of our cal in the material. lives. Naturally, many of the things that In the latter regard, finally emerge from this mental “Anticipation” may be addressing workshop to see the light of day in what Robert Frost was getting at galleries would not adhere to a rec- when he wrote “What you want, tangular format. By necessity, they what you’re hanging around in would assume new, often odd, the world waiting for, is for shapes, like the mixed media pieces something to occur to you.” in “Mindscapes & Paintings,” Ed Brodkin’s characteristically tactile Brodkin’s new solo show at Pleiades interpretation of the waiting Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from game takes the form of a painting March 15 through April 2. (There on a rectangular panel of a hori- will be a reception for the artist on zon and perspective lines appear- Saturday, March 19, from 3 to 6 ing to emerge from a larger, less PM.) regular shape, created with rough Although the so-called “shaped material, suggesting a large sack. canvas” has been around since the Here, the contrasts are especially 1960s, coming into prominence in stark between the precise white the work of artists like Frank Stella horizon and perspective lines and Ellsworth Kelly, Brodkin (who within the rectangle above and often prefers fiberboard to canvas) “Helios” the bold, broad strokes of color employs irregular formats in his slashed across the lumpier shape own inimitable manner, as much for sym- gral part of the pictorial space, the interac- below. One is reminded that in life in gener- bolic and expressive reasons as to achieve a tion of the artwork and its environment al, and in the work of Ed Brodkin in partic- purely formal effect. In “Warriors,” for approximating a fleeting optical sensation ular, as Henrietta Temple once put it, example, four smaller outer panels are akin to the flashes of light one sees after the “What we anticipate seldom occurs; what affixed to a large central panel, at the top on eye is exposed to direct sunlight. we least expected generally happens.” the left side of the composition and at the Such playful visual gamesmanship is yet More than most artists Brodkin, who bottom on the right. On each small panel, a another pleasurable aspect of Brodkin’s art, speaks of things being “in the air” as a work warrior from a different indigenous culture as seen once again in “Now and Then,” progresses, seems to be a receptor-site for is depicted in vigorous strokes of a different where a frieze of vertically striped identical ideas. News from near and far, both in color laid down on a solid ground in a linear figures joined at the hand like paper dolls terms of geography and time, filters into his pictographic manner. On the central panel, simultaneously seems to allude to both vision in ways that we seldom anticipate. larger versions of each figure are overlapped, primitive pictographs on the verge of mor- Indeed, it is his ability not only to surprise forming a muscular formal configuration phing into written characters and the simpli- us again and again but to pose questions akin to Brice Marden’s “Cold Mountain fied human symbols modern people have that provoke thought, making intellect man- Paintings.” Only, in Brodkin’s “Warriors,” evolved to reverse that process in places ifest in physical matter in ways that never the spatial tensions are achieved through the such as airports, where a multitude of lan- fail to be visually engaging, that makes a deliberate overlapping of the shapes of the guages now necessitates a new sign-lan- new exhibition by Ed Brodkin something figures rather than by gestural means. Yet guage. that this writer will always anticipate with the linear shapes, laid down in thick, juicily These simplified figures appear to vanish great eagerness. glistening strokes of green, brown, and red around the bend of a large horizontal ––Ed McCormack

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 Charles Murphy’s Cityscapes Capture Magic in the Mundane

ecause he paints the city in a manner What Murphy captures in this composi- and light that make us see the magic in Bso memorable as to make each of his tion, where that brilliant sky and the dis- the mundane, even as he employs the compositions an iconographic image of tinctive white dome of the Police Building beams of the viaduct to achieve a compo- the urban scene, one is tempted to see are bracketed between tenements cast in sitional thrust as dynamic as that in any of Charles Murphy as a less melancholic lat- shadow, as cars crawl over the glistening Franz Kline’s gestural abstractions. ter-day peer of Edward Hopper. However, gutter, is precisely that transcendent Snow plays an prominent role in some given the austere geometries that bolster instant when the rain relents and the sun of Murphy’s recent oils, either blanketing Murphy’s realism, coupled with his col- suddenly reappears as though at the flick a park in pristine whiteness during a bliz- oristic daring, it seems just as germane zard, as in “Stuyvesant Square Winter,” to mention that as a young man or piled up in gray mounds along the Murphy, a graduate of the Yale curb, as in “Gramercy Park Winter,” University School of Art and where a solitary figure is seen passing Architecture, studied painting with under the awning of the National Arts Josef Albers. Club. Other urban contrasts can be Like his former teacher, who was seen in “Promenade” and “Chinatown renowned as a color theorist as well as #2.” a painter, Murphy appears particularly The former painting is a breathtak- partial to yellow. But while Albers ingly panoramic composition, encom- made the most luminous of all hues passing the entire span of the prominent in the cool geometry of his Brooklyn Bridge, viewed over a com- famous “Homage to the Square” plex vista of rooftops, bathed in the series, Murphy employs it to butter the areas of light and shadow with which buildings in his paintings with warm Murphy brings his unpeopled sunlight. Touches of yellow also enliv- “23rd Street Gulf Station” cityscapes to vibrant life. The latter en areas of shadow in Murphy’s oils and canvas looks south down East illuminate what he refers to (in an artist’s of a celestial switch. Broadway, near Division Street, with statement for his recent exhibition “New For all his impressive formal grounding, lower Manhattan’s municipal towers York Impressions,” seen through Murphy is refreshingly unabashed regard- looming over receding rows of tenements February 2, at the National Arts Club, 15 ing his desire to instill in the viewer “a in the distance, as cars and the M15 bus Gramercy Park South), as those moments deeper, richer feeling of emotional pause for crowds crossing between the when “the sun breaks through and pro- involvement with the world around us.” outdoor vegetable stalls and the East duces a symphony of light and color.” And New York City, his home town, pro- Corner Noodle Shop. Although Murphy’s color is generally vides him with a plenitude of epiphanies Further enlivened by a visual cacophony intense, it is never garishly incongruous in with which to make his own emotional of signs covered with colorful Chinese the manner of the Fauves; for he is a real- involvement contagious. He does not characters,“Chinatown #2” captures and ist to the core, more concerned with cap- stoop to nostalgia, however; nor does he tames the bustling energy of one of the turing mood and atmosphere than bowl- traffic in the picturesque. No subject busiest intersections in the most vital ing us over with his chromatic innovation. could seem more commonplace, for neighborhood of the city. Here, as in all However, his colors invariably evoke a example, than “23rd Street Gulf Station,” of his “New York Impressions,” Charles truth that is more than merely factual. For where the service station, with its familiar Murphy makes a passing moment example, there has probably never been a blue and orange logo, is viewed from immutable by virtue of his consummate sky so pervasively yellow as the one in under an overpass that silhouettes tiny painterly alchemy. Murphy’s “Old Police Building.” Yet we pedestrians with its shadows. Yet Murphy ––Ed McCormack have all seen such a sky in our mind’s eye. imbues the scene with qualities of color

“Opening New Worlds” Emphatic Abstraction A FINE ARTS EXHIBIT February 19 - March 12, 2005 Co-Curators: Reception: February 24, 6-8pm Ina Simmons, Lucinda Prince February 23 - March 13, 2005 Marco Antonio Reena Kondo, Jeremy Alan Sykes, Sacchi Shimoda, William Lindsay Yookan Nishida, Bernardo Diaz, Lucinda Prince, Nicoart Joseph Infante, Ina Simmons, Meyer Tannenbaum, Ellen Spencer Erica Mapp, Patricia Tallone-Orsoni, Miguel Angel Mora

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm Broadway Mall Community Center 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea NY, NY 10001 Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com [email protected] www.wsacny.org

8 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 A New Wildness Enters Erma Martin Yost’s “Feltworks” rma Martin Yost was raised as a scale, the thick, toothy texture of hand-felt- yellow hues, the crevice between the two EMennonite and her early work took the ing lends the pieces a heft suggesting joined panels forming the actual border quilting tradition of a rural religious com- ancient tablets, the effect further enhanced between night and day. Here, too, subordi- munity that espouses unworldly austerity by their ruggedly irregular edges. The felt nate images pile up with a Persian richness: into the gritty, secular arena of contempo- panels––or “canvases,” as Yost refers to a graceful feminine arm appearing in the rary art, where it quite miraculously retained them–– are often arranged as diptychs, giv- window of one house, gesturing enigmati- its integrity and purity, even while Yost ing the appearance of open pages on which cally; the face of a veiled woman with a tackled issues, such as the domestic servi- her compositions unfold like fables in a sto- seashell hair-do filling the arched portal of tude of women, that her forbearers could rybook. And indeed her newest pictures are another. hardly have anticipated. as rich in animal and natural imagery as the Water and land are equally fluid or inter- Although informed by feminism, Yost’s tales of Aesop. Whereas Yost’s show of two changeable in other feltworks, such as “Sea work has never been politically obvious or years ago was filled with allusions to shelter Ladies,” where female faces resembling indulged in what Robert Hughes refers to and domesticity, including photo-transfers of those in old tintypes are superimposed on as “the culture of complaint.” Rather, images of fish in the deep; or in “Two she celebrates the strength and creativity Shores,” where a staid-looking of women in general, and of the quilt- Renaissance maiden could resemble making women in her lineage in particu- both a Buddha in the lotus position and lar, paying tribute to them through such a primly clothed Venus on the half-shell, devices as quoting decorative motifs suspended under roiling clouds between from her mother’s quilts in some of her watery expanses and land masses on own compositions. which gold metallic threads form glitter- Although she showed mostly innova- ing grasses and tall weeds. tive mixed media variations on quilting Primitive Venuses and female fertility techniques up until 1993, since that time figures of various shapes and kinds in a Yost has been exhibiting works in an variety of materials are another recurring archaic textile form that predated spin- feature of Yost’s new compositions: A ning and weaving several thousand years slender metallic one appears in “Silver ago, when nomadic people subjected Venus,” levitating near a leaping purple wool to heat and moisture, pounding it leopard with yellow spots and turtles until it matted into a rough fibrous mass. cavorting playfully near a water-hole Yost continues to innovate in the materi- amid lush green trees and purple moun- al that these ancient nomads used to tains in a fanciful faux-African landscape; make religious as well as utilitarian a corpulent clay Earth Mother is the objects in “Feltworks: Hand-Felted piece de resistance of “Venus Tree,” and Stitched Constructions,” her sixteenth an angular, Egyptian-looking figure solo exhibition at Noho Gallery, 530 with crossed arms, bordered by colorful West 25th Street, from February 1 beaded designs and bracketed between through 19. big green sequined flowers, dominates Other artists such as Robert Morris the sparer composition of “Lotus Lady.” and Joseph Beuys have worked with felt, Along with such potent, primal femi- the former in “process” pieces consisting nine forms, Erma Martin Yost has pop- of large mounds of the material piled on “Water Thrush” ulated her new feltworks with an entire the gallery floor, the latter combining it the farm where she grew up and faded fami- menagerie of fanciful land and sea creatures, with animal fat in installations and perform- ly album portraits of her maternal and pater- such as the little bone tortoises suspended ances. Both employed felt as a conceptual nal grandmothers, an unprecedented sense from strings in “Turtle Kites” or clustered element. But neither explored the material’s of wildness has entered her newest felt- together in a delicately sewn gauze cocoon rich aesthetic properties in as painterly a works. in “Winter Cradle”; the intricately stitched manner as Erma Martin Yost does in her Vestiges of domesticity remain in the sim- avians in “Owl Song” and “Oriole Song,” recent works, which combine a palpable plified house-shapes that have long been a and the various underwater critters wending physical presence with the intricacy of recurring motif of her work. Now, however, their way through other recent composi- Persian miniatures. these symbols often appear slightly askew, as tions, reminding one of former Beatle “I choose the tactile medium of felt rather though awash in the saturations of color Ringo Starr’s whimsical song “In an than canvas because the color is ‘one’ with that render the landscape aquatic, in pic- Octopus’s Garden.” the entire thickness of the object and not tures such as “Sun Song,” where one little Yost’s ability to create visual poetry by just on the surface, which results in unusual- domicile leans like a drunken boat, buoyed virtue of her metaphoric handling of diverse ly rich and dense color,” the artist says of and seemingly kept from sinking only by an materials calls to mind the similarly inventive these works, in which she merges the archa- orange orb that spirals up like a balloon box constructions of Joseph Cornell, while ic textile form with modern technology by from the waves formed by a flowing thread. the breadth of her imagination and the fan- adding appliquéd images created in Such colorful linear forms are a constant cifulness of her image-symbols, which take PhotoShop. in Yost’s new works, threading through her on meanings infinitely larger than the sum Yost also employs stitching in various col- compositions and connecting the various of their parts, is akin to the magical little orful threads, much as a painter might, for natural, cosmic, and manmade elements in masterpieces of Paul Klee. Erma Martin Yost mark-making and outlining sinuous shapes, pictures like “Night Chamber/Day acquits herself admirably in such august and adds small bits of clay, metal, or bone Chamber,” where suns and moons spin off company, building in each succeeding exhi- to some compositions, resulting in sensuous, the stitched outlines of superimposed and bition on an oeuvre that grows steadily atmospherically suggestive surfaces of a juxtaposed house-symbols set afloat against more surprising and substantial. unique opulence. Despite their intimate veils of deeply saturated blue and brighter ––Ed McCormack FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 Viridian’s “Vibrations” Showcases Six New Members iridian Artists @ Chelsea, 530 West tendency to read his compositions illu- personal traits, having recently stated that V25th Street, has maintained its status sionistically by superimposing small paint- his works reflect his own personality in as one of our most consistently exciting ed rectangles of color over the image here that they are “open. contorted but, at the artist-run venues by setting especially high and there, creating piquant accents that end, connected by a sound ‘thread’ in a standards for membership. Six artists who reinforce the flatness of the picture plane. structure that is strong and fragile at the recently made the grade were seen Thus, he sets up a tantalizing tension same time.” through January 29 in “Vibrations: New between the representational and the Two other new members employ differ- Viridian Artists.” abstract that makes us view his pictures as ent degrees of representation to put a per- Carol Benisatto is among a growing formal rather than anecdotal entities. sonal spin on objective subject matter: movement of artists who employ drawing Medieval Illuminated manuscripts do Phyllis Smith is a photorealist whose stat- as a finished medium, as opposed to a not exert an influence on many painters ed aim is to depict “complex deliberate vehicle for studies and preliminary sketch- today, but Rosemary K. Lyons is inspired and precise microcosms found ‘close to es. In Benisatto’s portraits in charcoal or by them to create works that meld metic- the earth’.” She accomplishes this with a pastel, fluid, boldly delineated figurative ulous craftspersonship with contemporary meticulous technique that lends her close- forms are set afloat against expanses of semiotexts and a singular conceptual sen- up floral compositions a heightened inten- white paper. Like George Grosz, sibility. One of Lyons’ most striking illu- sity that is almost hallucinatory, even as Benisatto often depicts her subjects in a minations casts light on “Catholic Sex she transcribes the botanical characteristics manner verging on caricature. However, Scandals” by combining religious iconog- of her subjects with scientific accuracy. her work is less satirical, more sympathet- raphy with an elegantly handlettered text Thus in her paintings, pink petals can take ic, than that of the famous German social citing statistics about nuns sexually abused on a labial quality that invests them with realist. by priests and other nuns, as well as erotic frisson, dewdrops on a leaf can For example, she depicts a bald, grossly accounts of a priest who convinced naive evoke beads of sweat on a harried brow. overweight individual of uncertain gender young women hoping to become nuns For while Smith works from photographs, wearing a backless evening gown without that sleeping with him would bring them she subtly transforms them in the process condescension or mockery. Benisatto closer to God. Just as Shahzia Sikander of painting in a manner that lends them a focuses on the humanity of her sitters, has revitalized the Indian miniature, remarkable emotional component. rather than their oddities, celebrating Rosemary K. Lyons gives the illuminated Roger Bole, who grew up in Detroit their individuality and peculiar beauty manuscript new life as a vital contempo- and has always been enamored of urban through her ability to isolate the telling rary vehicle for trenchant social criticism. subjects, invests his images of brownstone gesture, even as her swiftly drawn lines Marco Garello, on the other hand, facades and rooftops set against impassive and swelling contours compel us with translates a life filled with travel and varied skies with a sense of romantic longing. their abstract vigor. experiences into a personal language of But while Bole cites painters of the The oils on canvas in Jack Bolen’s geometric forms that sometimes morph Ashcan School, particularly George “Arcadia” series, based on photographic into wavering linear patterns. Grids and Bellows, as influences, his work also has a studies the artist made of monumental rectangular shapes created with colored strong formal quality, in that his composi- rock formations in Maine’s Arcadia plexiglass are frequently set against tions, with their muted colors and clearly National Park, and also informed by the grounds painted with metallic silver pig- defined forms, have strong abstract under- tactile qualities of Egyptian tomb paint- ment in Garello’s compositions. Often his pinnings. Endeavoring to apprehend what ings, conjure up rugged surfaces and forms are suspended equidistantly from he calls “the space beyond the limits of crevices in a pristine yet evocative tech- thin wires set against sheets of plexiglass, the painting,” Bole achieves a peculiarly nique recalling the implied textures in the creating a floating effect. Garello has potent combination of architectural work of the magic realist painter Ivan apparently evolved a systematic formal geometry and atmospheric poetry. Albright. However, Bolen subverts any vocabulary to express a complex range of ––Ed McCormack

February 19 - March 12, 2005 Reception: February 24, 6-8pm THE

BROOME Kathy A. Halamka STREET Young-jin Han GALLERY Patureau Ken Tan Ground floor, 1,300 sq. ft.

Exhibition space rental available Liberated Visions

498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 Tel: (212) 941-0130 Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea NY, NY 10001 Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

10 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 The Collages of Irving Barrett Construct Mythic Realms ike his grandfather and namesake, the Characteristically, however, Barrett does of cinematic landscape images. Lcomposer Irving Berlin, the collage not merely glue real tickets into the picture In 2004, Barrett explores such intricate- artist and painter Irving Barrett has an ele- but painstakingly constructs them in his ly layered abstract compositions further in gant style. When working in collage, he mosaic manner from many tiny bits of “Beer” and “Wine,” in which the forms does not overlap edges but creates contin- paper. And rather than being a Schwitters- float over grids of brilliantly colorful beer uous surfaces with small pieces of paper like abstraction, his considerably more and wine labels. However, in 2003 and much in the manner of a mosaicist or an involved composition expands from this 2004 he also embarks on a series of works inlayer. Just how meticulously executed such as “Gold Finch,” “Blue Jay,” Barrett’s collages are can be seen in his and “Cat Bird,” in which the grid is exhibition “Collages: Selected Works, submerged almost to the point of 1984-2005,” at Noho Gallery, 530 West invisibility within intricate mosaic- 25th Street, from February 22 through like images of birds. These are some March 12. of Barrett’s boldest compositions for The retrospective makes clear how their use of single large forms, yet Barrett’s work has evolved over the past simultaneously some of his most ten- two decades. One constant has been the der and lyrical pictures, as seen in grid, although Barrett has varied its presen- “Blue Jay,” where a single bird is tation. In earlier pieces, such as a 1984 poised on what appears to be an work in acrylic and collage entitled “The actual mosaic pavement (a perfect Killer Awake,” the squares of the grid synthesis of subject and medium) served a narrative purpose, as in a comic with a red brick wall behind it and a strip or filmic storyboard. Within the pan- fat full moon hanging low in the els are realist images reminiscent of a night sky. Here, the tiny creature sequence in the Martin Scorcese film “Taxi takes on a monumental quality, the Driver,” with a t-shirted protagonist mov- formations of its feathers intricately ing through a claustrophobic interior as delineated by tiny bits of pasted though stalking a victim, the severe crop- paper, the dark, bright eye of its pro- ping of the images and jerky, skewed angles file rhyming visually with the full within the panels adding to the impression moon, its bearing, with its proud, of a psychopath on a rampage. puffed chest, as formidable as that of The grid is also employed in a sequen- a knight in full armor. Equally strik- tial manner in Barrett’s 1987-88 work in ing in another manner are Gold collage and acrylic, “The Hollywood Finch,” in which the little bird is set Square,” to depict Ronald Reagan giving a like an icon within a red brick arch- speech. Each image is a “talking head” way, and “Catbird,” an image that close-up in a manner akin to Warhol’s mul- verges on abstraction, with the pale tiple portraits. However, while Warhol’s blue bird engulfed by green foliage, images are deadpan and repetitive, the patterns of feathers and leaves Barrett’s portraits are more expressive, cap- swirling like vigorous brushstrokes. turing the late former president in a variety “Gold Finch” Although Barrett’s bird collages of facial modes ranging from hammy, to (the most poetic treatments of this clueless, to outright goofy. small detail to include a complex variety of subject since the avian assemblages of Barrett’s compositions grow increasingly still life imagery, including miniature racing Joseph Cornell) are among his sparest pic- more intricate by the early 2000s, in col- cars, toy soldiers, a Godzilla figurine with a tures, he is not an artist to be easily lages such as “Caligula Harvest” (2000) stuffed monkey on its back, and a big- pigeon-holed, if one may may be forgiven and “Couples,” (2001). Fragmented headed, cross-eyed, cartoon character in an awful pun. For in 2004, he also hide-and-seek figures within multicolored what appears to be a motorized wheel embarks on one of his most intricate and grids suggest a kinship with postmodernists chair. One is at pains to even hazard a ambitious compositions to date: like David Salle and Sigmar Polke. In all guess as to the exact meaning of any of “Collapsed Synapse” brings back the two periods, Barrett moves gracefully between this; yet the imagistic juxtapositions are fas- title characters of “Timmy and Godzilla.” figurative and abstract compositions, as cinating in a strangely poignant sort of Only, now, two years later, we find the seen in “Against the Wall” and way, and the composition, like everything big-headed, cross-eyed boy in the motor- “Derivatives Askew”, both from 1994. In that Barrett does, is not only visually com- ized wheelchair and the green Japanese the former work, three surreal figures are pelling but has an impact much larger than film monster somewhat marginalized in an set against a brick wall and a black and its relatively modest size. apocalyptic composition where all manner white checkerboard-tiled floor, the rioting Among the most abstract of Barrett’s of mechanical toys are piled in heap with a patterns creating a dizzying optical effect; collages are those in which forms that box of animal crackers and other colorful in the latter, a gridded structure appears to resemble crisscrossed wooden beams are objects that suggest a childhood room well be deconstructing like a collapsing typogra- the main composition element, creating an remembered and transformed into a myth- phy shop, tiny words and letters spilling irregular, shattered grid on the picture ic realm. Indeed, the ability to remember out. The second picture recalls the use of plane, of which the aforementioned and manifest such playfulness well into printed text in some of Kurt Schwitters’ “Derivatives Askew” is an especially intri- adulthood is what makes an artist like “Merz” collages. Indeed, the strip of the- cate and vigorous example. In a seminal Irving Barrett so valuable. ater tickets in Barrett’s 2002 collage work called “Modern Posts” (1989), simi- ––Ed McCormack “Timmy and Godzilla” could also appear lar shapes, resembling irregular cruciforms, to be a tribute to that Dadaist predecessor. are superimposed on a serial arrangement

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 The Iconic Flower in the Digitalized Acrylics of Léon Kipping ot since Andy Warhol, has any artist ple hues enhance the sense of nocturnal Nexhibited such iconographic floral por- mystery, making for a strikingly atmospheric traits as the Dutch artist Léon Kipping, in composition. Indeed, Kipping’s his recent show at Agora Gallery, 415 West “Moonlight” combines the emblematic Broadway. However, while Warhol’s flowers power of contemporary abstraction with a were characteristically repetitive, each of symbolic lyricism reminiscent of Odilon Léon Kipping’s images is as individual as Redon. any human portrait. For while both artists In another work called “Petrified Desire,” employ mechanical means along with hand- green and violet hues combine with other, painting–– silkscreens in Warhol’s case, digi- deeply burnished, colors and more pro- tal prints on canvas in Kipping’s –– nounced textures, creating a composition Kipping’s use of paint is more gesturally that appears to pulse with suppressed ener- expressive. gy. The sense of sexual tension inherent in “Flower Power,” for example, with its yel- the title is projected through a sensually low petals radiating out from a vibrant red round, softly defused floral form that ground, has the frontal symmetry of a man- appears to hover in space at the center of the canvas. By contrast, in another composi- dala. Thus, it suggests the widespread inter- “Age of Time” est in Eastern spirituality, as well as the tion dominated by a single, central floral ecstatic benevolence of the hippie era, when form, “Age of Time,” Kipping employs was originally created with an electronic pen the term of the title blossomed into being. white petals set against an earthy, mono- on the computer. Kipping then employs Here, too, Kipping’s use of texture is espe- chromatic ground. In this work, rugged tex- design programs to refine his images, before cially appealing, with the petals and other tures and scored lines contribute to the transferring them to canvas and completing elements of the flower laid down in juicy, archeological sense of a floral fossil that has them with acrylic paints. textural strokes. survived miraculously down through the A successful art director and graphic By contrast, another work in the medium ages. designer as well as a painter, Léon Kipping of digital print and acrylic on canvas, enti- Along with floral subjects, Kipping also avails himself of advanced technology to tled “Moonlight,” is more ethereal. In this interprets other aspects of nature, as seen in achieve seemingly limitless chromatic variety work, yellow tulips appear to sway balletical- the composition entitled “Sunset,” in which and conceptual inventiveness. Yet he relies ly on their stems in a night breeze, their a yellow orb hangs low in a deep red sky, on his astute aesthetic sensibility and the tra- forms blurred by motion against a deep blue casting its glow over a dark horizon. The ditional medium of painting to bring his ground. The chromatic quality of this pic- artist’s use of textures as regular as the vibrant natural visions to final fruition. ture is subtly luminous, the floral forms illu- weave in a rough-hewn fabric such as ––Gloria Kiehl minated by the glow of the moon. Here, burlap, lends an almost sculptural physicality too, various secondary green, blue, and pur- to this image, which, like all of his work, Patrick Amarillas Takes a Purist Approach to Photomontage ollage has been a staple of modern Amarillas is a purist who apparently anomalies all the more disconcerting. Cand contemporary art since the early prefers to persist with paste and scissors. That Amarillas does not title his pic- experiments of the Cubists at the turn of Thus his pictures have an attractively tac- tures leaves a lot of leeway for imaginative the century, but photomontage has been tile quality that has been largely missing interpretation, inviting a certain amount somewhat less ubiquitous. Cutting out in most work involving the juxtaposition of creative collaboration on the part of and pasting down pre-existing photo- of disparate imagery in recent years. the viewer. One must take such images as graphic images to make compositions new Although the appropriation of images elegantly dressed women at a party where and distinctly different from the original from the popular print media and other wild animals roam freely, or sci-fi scenar- source materials has a history dating back sources has been widespread since the ios involving robots and Barbi dolls, or to the Dadaists. In the First International Pop era in the 1960s, few artists have giant lobsters scuttling along amid man- Dada Fair, which took place in Berlin in employed them as poetically as Amarillas nequins and skyscrapers at face value and 1920, artists such as Roaul Hausmann, does in his compositions, which gain in exercise one’s own imagination in decid- John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch intimacy and charm from their small scale. ing what to make of them. showed photomontages that were consid- Unlike his Dadaist predecessors, Amarillas Photomontage eventually came to be ered radical innovations for their political does not seem as concerned with political considered the most important innovation satire, social criticism, and ability to shock satire, social criticism, and shock value as of the Dada movement, indelibly influ- the general public. Heartfield and Hoch, he is with setting up surreal situations that encing the drawings of George Grosz, particularly, went on to become known as provoke a subtler response in the viewer. among other artists who participated, masters of the medium. However, apart In this regard, his work is more reminis- however briefly, in the movement, and from the photomontages that Romare cent of Max Ernst’s rearrangements of later having an even more profound influ- Bearden made early in his career, relatively images clipped from technical magazines ence on advertising and other aspects of few other artists have done distinguished and catalogs to create pictorial novels. the popular media. It seems only proper, work in the technique in recent years. However, while Ernst worked with black in an era rife with recycling and appropri- For this reason one was particularly and white line engravings, Amarillas’ use ation, that a gifted contemporary artist excited by the exhibition of photomon- of full color images that he cuts and such as Patrick Amarillas should revive the tages by an artist named Patrick Amarillas, rearranges in a multitude of startling ways technique in new and original ways. which took place recently at Montserrat lends his work a considerably wider aes- ––Wilson Wong Gallery, 584 Broadway. At a time when thetic range. It also enhances the visual computer technology is all the rage, verisimilitude that makes his imagistic

12 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Mangan: A Rock and Roller’s Visions of Humankind t is not uncommon in our multimedia era socialites from the transvestites. Ifor artists to excel in different disciplines His palette is appropriately elec- simultaneously, particularly in pop music, tric, given to brilliant reds and where four art school lads from Liverpool acidic yellows that highlight the went on to become world famous as The bleary eyes and bottle blonde Beatles. Both Ron Wood, one of the two shags of his subjects. Mangan is guitarists in the Rolling Stones, and David particularly good at capturing the Bowie are accomplished painters as well as kissy-kissy camaraderie of people musicians. More recently, this writer who probably hate each other but became acquainted with the work of yet come together nonetheless to another doubly gifted rock and roller from drink, do drugs, and smile for the the United Kingdom when the singer paparazzi. Mangan exhibited his paintings at Indeed, life appears to be just Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway. one big photo-op for these flam- Unlike Ron Wood (who paints portraits ing creatures, and Mangan views of his band mates in the Stones ad absur- them with the wry asides of an dom) and Bowie (who seems to specialize insider with certain reservations in “Culturephrenia” in self-portraiture), Mangan dispenses with his insightful canvases. In one the usual narcissism to give us vividly painting a male figure with long ley crowd and Mangan nails them with the expressive images of high society and frizzy tresses, possibly a rock star, is sand- eye and brush of someone who has has lowlife from a delightfully jaded angle. One wiched between to young women with seen them from an intimate perspective. Yet part Alice Neel, two parts Egon Schiele, equally opulent manes and the desperately another painting called “Mankind,” is just Mangan’s expressively distorted portraits gleeful grins of groupies. All three are red- as harrowing in terms of this artist’s per- have the decadent charm of the party pic- heads. All three have smiles like livid, spective to delineate the features and foibles tures on Page Six of the New York Post, smeared wounds. of a particular segment of society with although one has to assume that they actu- Another painting might depict the audi- insightful wit. ally depict the London demimonde in all its ence as seen by a rock and roller from the Mangan’s talent for social critique, how- still glittery, decadent glory. stage. One is a huge cretin with a shaved ever, is hardly the only virtue of his art. He With titles like “The Pusher Man,” head. Another is a blonde wearing one of happens to be a skillful portraitist with a “Superficial” and “Culturephrenia,” and those inane Statue of Liberty headbands. sympathetic ability to capture subtle quali- “Nonstopfullonbackdropcarryon,” Another wears a skeleton mask. One wears ties of expression that enable us to see Mangan’s paintings evoke a woozy world of a yellow baseball cap and the morose beyond the grotesque social mask that party animals in full plumage cavorting self- resentful expression of a mass murderer. Yet many of his people present in public to the consciously at various functions where it is another holds up a middle finger in a famil- lost human soul trapped within. probably not always easy to tell the iar vulgar gesture. All told, they are a mot- ––Marie R. Pagano WSAC Group Show Celebrates Nature’s Spell everal approaches to contemporary still This ability is especially impressive in unique color sense lend her scenes a highly Slife and landscape subjects by members Carpentieri’s painting of a hummingbird personal atmosphere, particularly in her oils of the West Side Arts Coalition were seen hovering near gladioli thrusting through a of a silhouetted, low-lying city skyline under in the recent group exhibition”Bewitched broken fence. a vast stratosphere streaked with luminous by Nature,” at Broadway Mall Community Ava Schonberg’s acrylic paintings are pink,yellow, and blue hues. However, Center, on the center island at Broadway most powerful the more stripped-down they Shamma can also evoke drama with more and 96th Street. get, as seen in her painting of Jerusalem subdued near-monochromes, as seen in her In contrast to the overblown scale of based on Armenian tiles, with its clear color painting of a gray sky over a gray body of much of today’s art, two artists demonstrat- areas, and her picture of a group of women water, where her vigorous brush work is the ed the intimate charms of miniaturism: Lori watching a sunset, its simplified forms and piece de resistance. K.A. Gibbons, on the Fischler’s “Les Fleurs” series depicted floral vibrant hues reminiscent of Milton Avery. other hand, is a latter day Fauvist, whose subjects in severely cropped pastel composi- Patience Sundaresan’s oils range from an landscapes and city scenes are invariably tions possessed of great delicacy and mys- exhilarating view of tiny figures making their filled with brilliant hues that heighten the tery. Byung Sook Jung’s equally diminutive way up a snowy mountain pass, to composi- effects of nature, as seen in one painting of watercolors captured the glorious, sun-gild- tions in which various natural elements, such figures gathered near a thick, curving tree- ed vistas and monumental architecture of as an oranges and a jellyfish or oxygen parti- trunk outlined in neon red, with a sinking Italy and Switzerland in striking detail and cles and the inside and seeds of a papaya, are sun similarly illuminated. Here, as in anoth- luminous washes of color. intriguingly juxtaposed either in grids or er oil, where brilliant clouds float over pur- Margo Mead, on the other hand, adjoining areas in the manner of a diptych. ple and yellow rooftops and water towers, employed watermedia on rice paper with The pastels of Linda Lessner have a shad- Gibbons invests her canvases with chromatic impressive fluency in her bold and colorful owy quality, as though seen through a lens radiance. floral still life paintings. Mead has mastered darkly. Lessner’s way of making all of her Miguel Angel, also reviewed elsewhere in Asian brush technique but combines it with landscapes appear as though dimly lit by an this issue, shows two abstract tributes to a Western coloristic intrepidness reminiscent overcast sky lends them with a melancholy fond feline subjects (one living, the other of Nolde. Another gifted watercolorist, atmosphere which is particularly affecting in deceased), in which his characteristically Carol Carpentieri, manages to depict specific her picture of decaying driftwood on a win- geometric mixed media assemblage shapes subjects with a good deal of verisimilitude try beach. are softened by a new painterly lyricism. without losing the freshness of her medium. Bushra Shamma is another artist whose ––Peter Wiley

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 Pia DiStefano Paints Her Inner Inferno ia DiStefano, who has her studio in opposed to merely physical cir- PFlorence, Italy, and will be included this cumstances or conditions. year in the prestigious Biennale of Florence, As with Bosch, we know that is a painter with a compelling view of the DiStefano is portraying an human condition, in which images of sensu- inner inferno, a realm of visions ality and mortality invariably intermingle. and nightmares that take on These are not the paintings of a happy go verisimilitude in direct propor- lucky soul, yet they are deeply moving and tion to how far she is willing to profoundly engaging in strange and unex- go in revealing them. And she pected ways. is willing to go very far indeed, The centerpiece of DiStefano’s recent in this and other paintings such exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 584 as “Torn,” where a nude self- Broadway, was an epic unstretched canvas, portrait with pensive, downcast ten feet high by twelve feet wide, nailed to eyes is included with other the wall as though crucified––an appropriate unclothed figures in a less fiery presentation, since it was called “Purgatory.” but, in its own way, equally DiStefano brought this classic theme of purgotorial scenario. Dante and Virgil alive anew in her boldly “Purgatory” Nakedness in DiStefano’s conceived oil which, despite its heroic scale brutal, energy to her symphonic composi- paintings is invariably a state of the soul as and formal complexity, was made all the tions, enhancing their brash authenticity. much as of the body. She strips her figures more immediate by the painter’s improvisa- Like the late Paul Georges, another bare, revealing their inner demons, even as tional approach. intrepid figuratiist, DiStefano appears to she employs succulent oil paint as a surro- “The paint hypnotizes me as it reveals invite chaos into the canvas, yet somehow gate for sensuous flesh. In another large something that could not be expressed in makes all of the diverse elements in the canvas called “Abyss,” a pair of seemingly words,” DiStefano has stated. “Forms slow- composition magically cohere. In disembodied hands reach out from darkness ly reveal themselves as already having been “Purgatory,” some figures are classically pro- to rest on the shoulders of a voluptuous there. Like a dance with inner conversation, portioned while others are wrenched wildly female nude. Are they the hands of a lover, painting for me is the language of feelings out of scale, so that a hand looms mon- partially obscured in shadow, or of malign and self awareness.” strously, clutching at the body of a ripe spirit reaching out for her from the Other Traces of process are everywhere visible in female nude entangled with other naked fig- Side? That we cannot know for sure and DiStefano’s paintings, invigorating her ures (one wearing a death’s head for a face) that the artist herself may share our uncer- accomplished realist technique with areas in a mass of bodies writhing above heaping tainty makes the paintings of Pia Stefano all that appear unfinished, drips, and other tongues of flame. Yet somehow, nothing the more powerful. spontaneous elements. These seemingly appears out of place; for the distortions ––Maureen Flynn unresolved notes add an unusual, almost depict emotional and psychological states, as “Facts & Fantasy” are Juxtaposed in WSAC Group Show n the West Side Art’s Coalition’s, “Facts converging in calligraphic configurations to shapes created with mirrored plexiglass tint- I& Fantasy,” seen recently at Broadway evoke a deep sense of nature, of bucolic ed in pale pink yellow and blue hues. Mall Community Center, on the center vitality and earthy essences evoked in bold, Fernando Uriel Salomone returns again island at Broadway at 96th Street, co-cura- brash strokes laid down with an authority and again to the image of simplified lollipop tors Lori Lata and Pud Houstoun left a lot suggesting an intuitive grasp of the hidden trees on a hilly terrain, back-lit by burnished of leeway for works ranging from the every- energies underlying landscape. golden hues, the mysterious illumination day to the fantastic––perhaps making the Frequent exhibitor Miguel Angel never suggesting something wonderful and myste- point that they’re not that far apart. fails to surprise the viewer, here with a hard- rious beyond those rolling mounds, lending The canvas collages of Irina Taflan suggest edge composition called “Fly Away: these oddly stylized oils a tantalizing atmos- both autumn leaves and something more Life/Balance/Death,” suggesting a geomet- pheric appeal. cosmic, with their swirling patterns and ric red sun, its beams radiating out from a A symbolic capsule biography of the splotches of color like musical notes in some central orb, to which an actual dead house- doomed screen goddess Marilyn Monroe, elusive melody. The brilliantly colored oils of fly is affixed–– giving new meaning to the appears to be the theme of Sacchi Yookan Nishida, on the other hand, imbue term “mixed media!” Shimoda’s intriguing sequence of oil por- the empty streets of a small town with a sur- Jane Deeken transforms the ordinary in traits, showing the platinum-tressed actress, real quality akin to de Chirico, so that even her bold acrylics, whether making a semi- distinctive mole and all, alternately juggling a sign for a soda fountain takes on an other- abstract statement with three fat red toma- pills, making a mask of her own face, and worldly quality. toes on a green plate, tilted frontally on the flashing cards like a fortune teller, her eyes Pud Houstoun engages us on a chromatic picture plane against a blue and yellow starry, her lips like a livid red wound. and tactile level with vigorous abstract oils in ground or capturing “Mrs. Cezanne” in a Another frequent WSAC exhibitor, Ina which the pleasure is in the the fleeting portrait that effectively quotes her husband’s Tumova Simmons, known for her innova- gesture, the painterly palimpsest of one succulent strokes. tive works in pencil on paper, showed three luminous color scumbled over another, the Erica Mapp breathes new life into meticulously executed tondos floated on mystery of matter, the silent language of a Minimalism with acrylic paintings built on clear glass, pointedly juxtaposing the Peace, sinuous brushstroke floating like a string on overlapping and serially organized rectangles Yin-Yang, and Fallout Shelter symbols with- the wind. and subtle color harmonies, but really hits in circular shapes with cut-out areas reveal- Lori Lata revealed her own gestural virtu- the bull’s-eye with “Seraph’s Wings,” an ing the white gallery wall. osity, with dark, juicy strokes of oil color angular diptych of matching mirror-image ––Chris Weller

14 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Sculptor Philip S. Drill Revives the Spirit of “Vitalism”

ecause, in his mid-seventies, of the sculptural statement, Bbesides being a widely Drill makes “emptiness” as pal- exhibited artist with numerous pable a presence as solid form. solo and group shows in gal- The intricately curving con- leries and museums to his credit, tours within the piece could Philip S. Drill presides over a suggest a multitude of natural third-generation family con- forms such as shells, caves, or struction business in West the sockets and other orifices in Orange New Jersey, he has been animal skulls. At the same time, the subject of human interest the luminous beauty of the sur- stories in the local press. By its face also evokes more fleeting, very nature, however, such pub- less physical aspects of nature, licity only touches lightly upon such as the subtle movement of what really makes Philip S. Drill daylight as it plays upon the newsworthy: his formidable gifts surfaces of rocks, foliage, or as a sculptor. Indeed, given the water. The combination of the magnitude of Drill’s aesthetic material and the ephemeral is gifts, such publicity can only be one of the salient features of compared to if Wallace Stevens Drill’s pieces in cast glass, alter- had been covered in his home- nately suggesting the physical town newspaper in Hartford, and the spiritual, creating a Connecticut, as a local insurance synthesis of the earthly and the executive who just happened to numinous. write poetry in his spare time ! Another facet of Drill’s art In terms of playing down the can be seen in “Flight, a work importance of his sculptural in cast bronze and glass in contribution it does not help which layered circular and matters that, like his distin- wing-like shapes evoke a soar- guished but folksy predecessor ing velocity and abstract avian Alexander Calder, Philip S. Drill grace. One can read all manner happens to be an unpretentious of meanings into this piece, but man, who instead of making its formal attributes speak for grandiose statements and spout- themselves, operating ing lofty aesthetic theories, is autonomously to provide us quoted saying down-home with pleasure on a purely things like, “Since it requires “Flight” by Philip S. Drill (Photo: Jason Klandella) visual level, evoking poetic patience, it’s really a challenge. I allusions that evade specific enjoy the shapes. I can’t believe I do it.” found on a beach and realized that he interpretation. Artists like Drill, who are deeply rooted in would need a more malleable medium to Indeed, the ultimate value of Drill’s work family and community and do not run capture its organic flow, he began modeling is in his ability the stimulate the imagination around in bohemian circles with an his forms with plaster and clay, later casting by evoking the movement, energy, and entourage are often underestimated. Yet it is the pieces in acrylic, bronze, stainless steel essences of nature without becoming their very connection to life as most people or glass. In this phase of his work, Drill bogged down in its particulars. In this live it, rather than to the politics of the art acknowledges Jean Arp and Henry Moore regard, Philip S. Drill is very much akin to world, that makes their work so deeply felt as influences, and traces of the former artist Henry Moore, who according to Sir and valuable. One thinks of other artists in can be seen in the grace and purity of his Herbert Read, author of “Art and the the American grain, such as Charles forms, while observation of the latter artist’s Evolution of Man,” believed that “ behind Burchfield, who forged impressive oeuvres formal strategies have obviously helped him the appearance of things there is some kind while living quiet lives far from the usual to establish his method of integrating posi- of spiritual essence, a force or immanent haunts of the avant garde. Indeed, although tive and negative spaces. Yet Drill’s most being which is only partially revealed in Burchfield was a watercolorist, and Drill is a important lessons have come from the natu- actual living forms.” Like Moore, sculptor the two men have something in ral world. Philip S. Drill is a “vitalist,” in that his work common: They have both evolved a person- “Natural forms inspire me,” he has been attempts to apprehend the metaphysical al idiom for interpreting the power and quoted as saying. “A walk in the woods, a qualities of organic life. In his early rejection beauty of the natural world. stroll on the beach or a city street, even of welded metal––a linear, constructed, Since the rhythms of nature are cyclical, bones from the remains of a meal have mechanical medium––for more fluid casting circular shapes predominate in the sculp- served as a catalyst for creating a design.” techniques, Drill embraced a vitalistic aes- tures that Philip S. Drill shows in his exhi- One of the most striking aspects of Drill’s thetic through which he continues to bition at the Venezuela Gallery, 7 East 51st work is his use of negative space to enliven explore what Read refers to as the “ponder- Street, from March 1 through 25. the interior of his pieces, often taking the ability” of organic form. And in doing so, Being a contractor by trade, it stands to form of holes connecting one side of the he aligned himself with the sensitivity to vol- reason that when Drill first started to sculpt sculpture to the other. These are especially ume and mass that characterizes the great in 1975, his first medium was welded steel, striking in Drill’s luminous cast glass piece sculpture of the past, even as he continues with which one constructs a piece much in “Interiors II.” Here, as in other pieces, par- to evolve new shapes with which to evoke the manner of building a house. However, ticularly in this ethereal, translucent medi- the spirit of the natural world. after Drill became enamored with a shell he um, which captures light as an integral part ––J. Sanders Eaton

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 The Shapely Compositions of Turkish Painter Ali Aksoy ince the 1960s, certain artists, but marvel at the skill with which Sparticularly of the minimalist Ali Aksoy dissects space and ani- persuasion, have employed the mates the picture plane with bold shaped canvas to depart from the swerving lines, often in black over- traditional rectangular format and laid with tones of red blue or yellow to lend painting a sculptural that convey a spiritual kinship with dimension. Few, however, employ Mondrian’s palette of brilliant pri- it as successfully as Ali Aksoy, a maries. painter born in Turkey in 1957, Aksoy, however is very much the seen in a recent solo exhibition at gestural painter, employing line calli- Montserrat Gallery, 584 graphically in the manner of an Broadway, in Soho. action painter, and the odd shapes What distinguishes his work is of his canvas contribute to the sense how successfully his gestural style of movement in his work by alter- jibes with the various odd shapes nately nipping certain shapes in the in which he works, creating a per- bud with their abruptly cut away fect synthesis of subject and sup- edges or allow others to expand port. For the most part, Aksoy’s Painting by Ali Aksoy and continue where the limitations compositions are abstract. Most consist of position, giving the large painting a buoyant of a rectangular canvas would restrict or linear gestures, shapes, and color areas akin feeling, as if it were about to take flight. The abort them. to the paintings of the American artist Brice feathery quality of the brushwork further Aksoy exploits such compositional oppor- Marden for their mazelike configurations. enhanced the wing-like effect–– although tunities thoughtfully, providing us in the However, Aksoy occasionally includes cer- Aksoy obviously makes no attempt at surreal process with an exhilarating new way of tain simplified recognizable shapes as well, symbolism and would seemingly prefer for looking at the painting, of visually inhabit- such boldly outlined floral forms, or a heli- us to view his paintings for the formal rather ing its space, and being pleasantly taken copter, or an automobile, or the rudimenta- than their allusive qualities. aback by its compositional anomalies, its ry houses and other architectural shapes in Yet, like Elizabeth Murray, another artist sudden unexpected departures from the the largest canvas in his recent show at who employs shaped supports consistently norm. In the final analysis, there is little Montserrat. Here, sketchy buildings were and effectively, Aksoy’s work invariably sug- more that we can ask from any artist than clustered at the center of the canvas and gests imagery above and beyond the to surprise us. And that is one thing that bracketed between vigorous strokes of red, abstract qualities that lend his paintings their Ali Aksoy manages to do consistently, blue, yellow and black laid down with a main thrust. Indeed, these suggestive bits of catching us off guard and stimulating us broad brush. These roughly curving strokes imagery imbue his paintings with a unique again and again with his energetic and extended to the edges of the canvas, which evocativeness which adds considerably to engaging shaped canvases. jutted out like wings at the top of the com- their appeal. That said, we can do nought ––Chris Weller Maria K. Bolster: Dreams Woven into Tapestry hile painters often talk of how their Fauves, their intensity enhancing the form suggests mental images rather than Wmedium leads them to their imagery, painterly quality of her compositions. records direct visual experience,” and this the manipulation of pigment itself suggest- Although she learned the craft weaving statement is certainly accurate in regard to ing various possibilities for improvisation, we techniques from her mother, who was Bolster’s ability to make every image that normally think of weaving as a more delib- trained as a gobelin artist at the Lodz Art she weaves an artistic statement that not erate process, every detail of which must be School, Bolster earned an MA in art history only compels us for its subject matter but planned in advance. It has been said of in Warsaw (currently she continues her pas- succeeds in purely abstract terms as well. Maria K. Bolster, however, who was born sion for the subject as a cicerone at Fonthill One especially fine example of this is the into a family of artists in Poland, that she Museum, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania), and tapestry entitled “Fanfan Two Lips,” its prefers to “weave her dreams into tapes- her knowledge enables her to elevate her composition dominated by fiery red and yel- tries.” And the accuracy of that statement medium to the level of fine art. low hues. This bold composition in linen was made clear in Bolster’s recent exhibition Just how successful she is in endowing her warp/wool and mohair weft ostensibly at Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway. tapestries with high aesthetic value was espe- depicts a floral subject, yet as its wittily pun- Although she does not create mere “pein- cially evident in her landscape composition ning title hints there is also a labial sugges- tres-cartoniers” and painting imitations, “Perpetual Motion,” with its brilliant colors tiveness to its sensually flowing forms. At Bolster works like a painter in that her imag- and sinuous linearity reminiscent of both the same time, one can savor the composi- ination is stimulated by experimentation Art Nouveau and the paintings of Edvard tion for its abstract attributes alone, which with her materials. Her engagement with Munch. Here, too, the lake that dominates rival those of any abstract painting for their “sight” and “touch” in the process of creat- the composition is particularly dynamic, its bold beauty. ing her gobelin tapestries often inspires her wavering lines creating a sense of fluid Other floral tapestries, such as “Roses: to depart from the original design, leading movement, and the entire picture comes Super Star ‘60,” with its bouquet of pink to new discoveries that often make her alive with a mystical intensification of nature roses exploding out of a stout blue vase also pieces turn out quite differently than she ini- akin to that of the Nabis. It is rare to see reveal the formal virtues that make the tap- tially visualized the project. Indeed, she such a personal, emotive element in any estries of Maria K. Bolster serious and makes preliminary studies in pastels and the craft medium; Bolster, however, transcends enduring works of art. spontaneity of that medium often carries craft to invest her tapestries with a subjective ––Dorothy Whittemore over into the tapestries that she creates, in power wholly her own. Someone once said which she employs colors reminiscent of the of her work that its “synthesis of color and

16 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Julio Aguilera: A Venezuelan Artist Makes His Mark in North America “ e knows neither what he wishes for, tuous female nude, although address- Hnor what he can hope for,” wrote ing less weighty themes, are similarly Goya in his seventy-ninth year, reflecting on strong in execution, their forms prac- the life of an artist. “He is celebrated for his tically carved out of thick, juicy oil restlessness, his angers, his passions; he is full impastos that lend them a physical of curiosity; he frequents fairs and popular presence akin to his sculptures. fetes, taking a lively interest in circus ani- Conversely, Aguilera invests his sculp- mals, acrobats and monsters. He paints, tures with the fluid movement and draws, engraves, learns lithography and ini- gestural force of painting. The two tiates himself in all the technical discoveries. mediums enrich and complement His lucidity is absolute.” each other as the doubly gifted artist One is reminded of Goya’s words on a works back and forth between them, Julio Aguilera with painting visit to the midtown Manhattan studio of often interpreting the same themes. rable metaphor for how such machines serve the painter and sculptor Julio Aguilera, as he Splendid examples of this can be seen in the modern world’s needs for transportation prepares for his upcoming solo exhibition at the two sculptures entitled, respectively, of fuel and heating oil. the Embassies and Consulates of Venezuela, “War and Peace” and “Minotaur,” both of In Julio Aguilera’s studio, next to some 1099 30th Street, N.W., Washington D.C., which have also been realized as paintings. snapshots of him posing cozily with his pret- from March 7 to April 1. In “War and Peace” (a more monumental ty blond wife Elena, there is a convincing For evidence of the artist’s restless cre- version of which has been commissioned for photograph of the artist standing with an ative energy is everywhere: In the half-com- a building on Park Avenue), the theme is arm around the shoulders of a seated Pablo pleted paintings on the easel and lined up embodied in the rhythmically intertwined Picasso. Of course, since Aguilera was only along the walls; in the forms being modeled forms of a bull astride a struggling horse, eleven years old when Picasso died and is in clay, later to be cast in bronze, on the seemingly symbolizing how the aggressive fully grown in the photograph, the picture is sculpting table; as well as in the squeezed forces unfortunately prevail over more placid obviously a mock-up, an affectionate joke. and scattered tubes of oil paint on the ones. In “Minotaur,” the big woolly head of Yet it is clear that palette and the lumps of fresh Aguilera, who refers clay on the floor. However, to Picasso as “The while Goya was an aficionado Old Man,” sees the of the bull ring, as he directs Spanish master as a one’s attention to a recently spiritual father. And completed canvas called indeed the spirit of “Matador,” Julio Aguilera Picasso is present in declares, “I am an enemy of the bold figurative bullfighting!” distortions of He says this with the con- Aguilera’s paintings viction of a man who once and sculptures of excelled in a violent sport as a bulls and horses; of four-time international karate musicians and harle- champion, but finally quins; of minotaurs renounced violence for the and female nudes life of an artist. His contempt with sensually for an even more violent swelling contours. blood sport in which the However, even odds weigh heavily in favor when locating him- the human participants, while self firmly within the their unwilling animal oppo- traditions of the mas- nents are summarily executed ters he admires (as at the finale of the ritual, is he does in his bows obvious in his painting. to Hispanic forbear- “Matador” shows the bull “War and Peace” ers like Goya and triumphant, for once, the Velasquez such as his witty contemporary matador slumped over his powerful back the fabled man-beast, nestled between the reworking of “La Infanta”) Julio Aguilera like a limp rag in his green suit of lights. A breasts of a swooning female nude, conveys emerges as a highly original and thoroughly horse the color of fresh blood (“All of my the more positive power of erotic passion. committed talent. Indeed, Aguilera has horses are red,” says Aguilera) rears up Both pieces are possessed of a formal fluidi- remained true to his calling and his unique directly behind the bull. Presumably, it is the ty, coupled with a craggy ruggedness of sur- vision ever since, as an impoverished five mount of a fallen and gored picador, the face, akin to the best sculptures of Jacques year old shining shoes in the streets of bull’s most cowardly tormentor. The horse Lipschitz. Caracas, Venezuela, a local painter made is turned in the opposite direction from the In another recent sculpture by Aguilera, him the gift of a handful of half squeezed bull, creating the effect of a single mythic commissioned by a collector named Rafael tubes of oil paint. Thus began a journey that creature with a head at each end. Both ani- Rojas to grace the board room of the has brought Julio Aguilera to his present mals appear more noble than the defeated Venezuelan firm Venro Petroleum, tall coni- prominence as arguably the most dynamic matador . cal oil rigs and drilling machines metamor- artist from Venezuela at work in the United Other paintings by Aguilera, of a clown phose into robotic, dinosaur-like beasts of States today. ––Ed McCormack from his “Circus” series, and of a volup- burden. Thus the sculptor creates a memo-

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 Taking the Definitive

Photo: Hans Namuth. ® 1991 Hans Namuth Estate. Collection, Center for Creative Photography. GALLERY&STUDIO 18 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 de Kooning Biography Personally

Briefly, as a young artist in the 1960s, Like de Kooning himself, we wore evidence mind. The main question is: What showing at the Brata Gallery on East Tenth of our vocation spattered all over our prole- Hollywood leading man will play Bill de Street and damned near starving, I took a tarian dungarees as blatantly as a heart on a Kooning? Jude Law looks right for the role part-time job knocking off “de Koonings” sleeve. and might be a logical choice, given that the in a kind of artistic sweatshop in a down- painter emerges as a womanizer to rival town loft that produced paintings for the * * * “Alfie” himself. lobbies of apartment buildings, banks, At the same time, Mark Stevens, the art movie theaters, and other places that strove According to Stevens and Swan, Tenth critic for New York magazine, and Annalyn to affect an artifice of culture for the clue- Street was “the center of the art world in Swan, a former senior arts editor for less. They weren’t exactly forgeries, because the late 1950s.” But by the time my genera- Newsweek, both write knowledgeably about I didn’t sign de Kooning’s name to them tion arrived on the scene in the mid-sixties, art. They cover every important develop- (nor my own, God forbid!). But at a quick all that remained was the low-rent atmos- ment and period in de Kooning’s career, glance––or what de Kooning himself phere and the communal spirit. Yet, there from his fruitful early friendships with referred to in his wonderful Dutch-inflected were still raucous openings on Friday nights, Arshile Gorky who “provided the critical English as “a slippery glimpse”–– they where even winos from the nearby Bowery model and moral outlook that helped de might have fooled the undiscerning eye. could wander in, help themselves to cheap Kooning decide how he would live his life”; It was easy: Every artist on the Tenth wine and feel like they’d stumbled into to his early figurative works; to his seminal Street gallery scene, which started when he Seventh Heaven. Indeed, the line of demar- abstract expressionist paintings; to his sensa- had his studio there, knew de Kooning’s cation between Bowery bums and hard tional “Women” series; to his rapturous style––those fleshy pinks, vibrant yellows, drinking artists often grew vague. We had all abstract landscapes of the early 1960s and and brilliant blues; those juicy, gestural heard the stories (confirmed in the present the controversial paintings he produced late strokes–– by heart. Imitating de Kooning biography) about de Kooning’s friends in life, befogged by Alzheimers and increas- was part of paying one’s dues; you had to sometimes discovering him sleeping off a ingly manipulated by studio assistants. They work through him, to get him out of your drunk in the gutter. Far from being put off are especially enlightening about technical system, before you could arrive at some- by them, we found such excesses romantic. matters, such as his use of safflower oil thing halfway original. After the Tenth Street openings we’d instead of the standard linseed oil to get that Now, it was fun to wallow once more in often continue to party at the Cedar Tavern, lush, “blubbery” quality, as he called it, that the manner of the master ––and get paid for where our heroes once drank, emulating he liked in his paint surfaces. And they give it besides. But my very admiration for him world class boozers like de Kooning, us invaluable glimpses of the artist’s origins eventually made what I was doing unten- Pollock, and Franz Kline with an enthusi- in the book’s first chapter, “Hard able: de Kooning was such a god to me that asm that caused more than one of us to suc- Beginnings,” assiduously researched in it came to seem almost sacreligious, and I cumb to alcoholism and others to eventually Rotterdam, where de Kooning was born just had to quit. go on the wagon. into poverty in 1904, the abused child of I might have been less rash had I known Stevens and Swan evoke the ambiance of divorced parents. then all that I know now, having recently the Cedar vividly: its smell of “spilled beer We follow young Willem, whose drawing read De Kooning: An American Master, the and tobacco smoke,” its low light, its “exis- ability was recognized early, to his first job definitive new biography by Mark Stevens tential aura,” which “owed more to Brando as an apprentice in a commercial design stu- and Annalyn Swan (Alfred A. Knopf, $35). on the docks than Sartre at Deux Magots.” dio at age 12, and on to the Academy, Who knew, for example, that in his own They also provide memorable word portraits where he studied classic art and guild tech- early struggles to survive and support his of its patrons: Pollock was pugnacious, niques. Not far from the academy was the art, Willem de Kooning actually did window boorish, given to “cowboy-on-spree bustling seaport’s red-light district, where he designs for A.S. Beck Shoe stores, freelanced drunks.” Kline, a more sophisticated drinker reveled in the rakish subculture of sailors, “pretty-girl and pretty-boy pictures” to Life who prided himself on his resemblance to shipbuilders, slumming businessmen, confi- magazine, did hairstyle illustrations for the suave film actor Ronald Coleman, was a dence men, pimps, and prostitutes. It was Harper’s Bazaar, and––shades of Andy nimble conversationalist who “invented a here, watching the whores who would Warhol!––even put together a portfolio of kind of fantastic double-talk.” Although sometimes flash their breasts provocatively fashion illustrations? tense and reserved when sober, after a cou- to attract customers, that de Kooning first Those of us who came later had an exag- ple of drinks, “de Kooning began to talk in became fascinated with the “slippery gerated fear of “selling out” that would a way that seemed to undermine authority, glimpse,” as he would later describe what he have made fashion illustration, especially, confront unspoken rules and crack language tried to capture in paint. The authors expli- seem impossible to reconcile with our itself into surprising new pieces.” cate it as “those quick, oblique but illumi- macho mental image of the man we strove With its cast of colorful characters, deli- nating moments that the eye registers to emulate. Fashion and art had not yet cious gossip, and steamy sexual intrigues, almost subliminally.” met. Young artists back then did not dude this book is such an entertaining read, that Arriving in New York as a stowaway in themselves up in chic black designer duds. one can’t help casting the movie in one’s 1926, he lived for awhile in Hoboken, New

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 Jersey, birthplace of that other “She was determined to mythic personality, Sinatra. assume the privileges ordinarily (Musing morbidly late in life, accorded to men,” the authors the painter would say “I would tell us. “Those privileges like to have Frank Sinatra’s extended to sex. Like many record ‘Saturday Night Is the men, she saw nothing wrong Loneliest Night of the Week’ with playing the field.” played at my funeral and imag- However, they also note, “This ine that all my friends’ eyes relationship, in which she and should be drowned in tears.”) Bill remained soulmates what- In Hoboken, de Kooning ever the passing distractions of found work as a house painter, love and sex might bring their and, remembering that time, way, was not just a facade: it would later often say, “I always remained true for her.” learned a great deal on how to Their marriage survived even mix pigment with water and Bill’s permanent liaison with the oil.” artist Joan Ward, mother of his Fellow artist Conrad Marca- beloved daughter Lisa. Ward, Relli, who met de Kooning however, soon realized “that soon after he arrived in the birth of Lisa would not America recalls, “He was like transform de Kooning into a the Dutch Boy on the paint responsible father or renew his cans, blond and blue-eyed. He love for her. De Kooning, it was was like a little boy. He had a clear, was simply not going to thick Dutch accent. He was a inconvenience himself ––or his very Chaplinesque character, Photo: Estate of Rudy Burckhardt/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York art––to accommodate other that little immigrant. His whole lives. It would instead be Joan manner was very humble. If he came into a groupies. There were one-night stands with and Elaine, the women with the greatest room, he was awkward, like with his hat in women he picked up at the Cedar, as well as claim upon him, whose lives would be his hand...” relationships that went on for years, all often upended.” Although de Kooning never lost either occurring simultaneously. Although Bill and Elaine lived apart for his accent or his outwardly humble manner, most of their marriage, they never divorced. he gained a great deal more confidence as * * * Elaine was Bill’s biggest champion, promot- he became a part of the vibrant art scene ing him with as much wifely partisanship already brewing in downtown New York. By Bill finally met his match in Elaine Fried, and pride as Lee Krassner hyped her hus- 1929, he was living in Manhattan with his an art student from Brooklyn, soon to band, Jackson Pollock, in the “friendly ene- first American girlfriend, a vaudeville per- become the painter Elaine de Kooning, who mies” rivalry between the two big guns of former named Virginia “Nini” Diaz. He came into his life in 1938 and remained an abstract expressionism. Each was intent on designed window displays for A.S. Beck important part of it, in one way or another, protecting her husband’s reputation as “the shoe stores during the day, toured art gal- up to the very end. Beautiful, brilliant, artis- most significant American painter of his leries on his lunch hour, and sometimes hur- tically ambitious, Elaine was the first woman generation.” In this way, although both ried home after work to paint modernist de Kooning actually fell in love with and the women were painters themselves and inde- canvases indebted to Matisse. only woman he ever married. Yet, as he was pendent spirits, they remained traditionally Fast forward to 1938. De Kooning is liv- soon to find out, she was not only as ambi- supportive spouses, to some extent subordi- ing with a Martha Graham dance student tious about painting as he was but had no nating their own ambitions to those of their and sometime artists model named Juliet interest in keeping house or submitting to men. Brown, who will later marry the famous sur- the double sexual standard that was routine If the sheer novelty of Pollock’s drip realist Man Ray. While cohabiting with among downtown painters and their wives technique had gained him more publicity Juliet, de Kooning is having an ongoing in their era. and earlier success, by 1952 de Kooning affair with his former live-in girlfriend Nini Stereotypically Dutch in his desire to had turned the tables with “Woman I,” Diaz. At one point, returning from abroad have a hausfrau who kept a clean and which boldly defied the contention of after a vaudeville tour, Stevens and Swan tell orderly home and put a good meal on the Clement Greenberg, Pollock’s biggest criti- us, “Nini arrived in New York with no table, de Kooning was probably as dismayed cal booster, that the only possible direction money and nowhere to stay. And so she by Elaine’s disinterest in housekeeping or for progressive painting was now abstrac- turned to de Kooning for help. For awhile, bearing him children as he was by her tion. This monstrous female icon with fang- she recalled, she slept in the same bed as Bill extramarital affairs. (“Vot ve need is a vife,” like teeth and a voluptuous body slashed and Juliet with Nini on one side of Bill and he once declared, surveying the mess in down in ferocious strokes was seen as shock- Juliet on the other.” their shared studio, a line that thereafter ingly misogynistic by some, a masterpiece by Obviously, the little Dutch Boy from the became a bittersweet shared joke.) others. Perhaps synthesizing the public paint can had undergone a radical bohemian Elaine caught a lot of flack for being a impact of screen goddesses like Marilyn transformation. His relationships with schemer and a manipulator. Yet no male Monroe and the painter’s private power- women were both casual and complex. painter was regarded as harshly for exploit- struggle with Elaine and the other women Although he was not yet successful in ing others both professionally and sexually, in his life, “Woman I” was a radical depar- worldly terms, he was already known down- causing one to wonder if Elaine was simply ture from “Excavation,” the abstract tour de town as a rising painter, and his good looks condemned for being a feminist before her force he had exhibited at the 1950 Venice and charismatic manner attracted lots of time: Biennale, and which the authors acknowl-

20 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 edge as a masterpiece, “a sionally mistaken for synthesis of the contrary ––Elizabeth Taylor. passions animating painting Sometimes the paparazzi during the first half of the photographed her and de twentieth century.” Kooning for the cheap “Woman I” was hailed in papers and magazines. She glowing essays by Tom bought as many clothes as Hess and Harold de Kooning could afford, Rosenberg, the two leading and persuaded him, too, to critics for ArtNews. buy some fine Italian suits. Rosenberg’s piece, especial- But she and de Kooning ly, was so fulsome that often fought, especially some art world skeptics when they had been drink- regarded it as “thunderous ing heavily, which shocked bullshit.” Stevens and Swan the Italians, who were unac- speculate that “Hess and customed to late-night Rosenberg each found in de noise and brawling.” Kooning a way to build a While the authors note reputation: a critic often that the affair with Ruth enters history on the back “with its daily pattern of of a great artist.” A writer long lunches, late nights, more given to vulgarity and heavy drinking seriously than Stevens and Swan compromised de Kooning’s might be tempted to work habits,” they also amend that last phrase to acknowledge that she could read “on the belly of a great also be something of a artist’s wife.” For the two muse, reinvigorating the biographers inform us that Henry Bowden. Courtesy of the Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco aging painter with her in the late 1940s and early youthful enthusiasm: ’50s, “Elaine had affairs with de Kooning’s de Kooning was seeing Ruth Kligman could “Coming into de Kooning’s studio one two main critical champions,” and, a few believe it. Or perhaps it was poetic injustice. day, not long after their relationship began, sentences later, add “Many, in fact, believed Kligman was the survivor of the car crash Ruth Kligman saw a large blue and yellow that she chose to sleep with the two critics that killed Pollock and Kligman’s friend, painting on the wall and immediately in order to promote her husband’s career.” Edith Metzger. In the eyes of most artists, exclaimed, ‘Zowie!’–– a piece of art criticism she was the hot young thing who had de Kooning relished. It might remain the * * * swooped into the drunken Pollock’s deteri- ambition of de Kooning and his friends to orating life, driven away his wife, Lee create a ‘masterpiece,’ but in the late fifties it Before I gave up drinking for good sever- Krassner, and behaving with a va-va-voom would seem corny and hifalutin––and too al years ago, I preferred to drink with people flamboyance new to the art world. Elaine European––to use a word like that. ‘Zowie’ who could keep up with me. One such per- called her ‘pink mink.’ Franz Kline preferred was, instead, the sort of sinewy street slang son was Ruth Kligman, a painter several ‘Miss Grand Concourse.’ What understand- that de Kooning and other painters of the years older than myself, who’d had a superb ably excited and impressed the armchair psy- period relished. In Ruth’s eyes, de Kooning mentor in that regard: Jackson Pollock. In chiatrists at the Cedar was how psychologi- had knocked one outta da park. Hit the the mid-seventies, we sat in a brown, cally strange and revealing the relationship jackpot. Scored big time. Kaboom!” bummy gin mill downstairs from Ruth’s loft appeared. Was Bill still competing with “Ruth’s Zowie,” as de Kooning named on West 14th Street and she regaled me Pollock, even now, after Pollock’s death?” the painting, is one of several major works with tales of Jack The Dripper. She had Perhaps Ruth chose to emphasize her reproduced in full color in the book, and published a breathless memoir called “Love affair with Pollock because her innate flair the authors read a great deal of erotic mean- Affair,” all about her romance with Pollock for the dramatic told her that it was more ing into its “explosive coming together of some twenty years earlier, when she was a compelling for a love story to end in brushstrokes,”its “knotting of forms into a beautiful young art student and he was in tragedy. Certainly it was more flattering to climactic burst,” “feminine V shapes,” even the prime of his decline. However, the sto- her own image to be seen as the bereaved attributing to the paint application itself “a ries she told me privately about his drunken- lover of the starcrossed James Dean of the slip-and slide quality that was sexual.” ness, impotence, depressions, and incon- art scene than as a calculating groupie who Anyone who writes about art can under- solable fits of weeping seemed more pathetic moved in on Pollock’s only remaining rival stand the temptation to seize upon the sen- than romantic. almost as soon as the body was cold. Still, suality of such a painting and make easy As much as she seemed to enjoy remi- she was with de Kooning quite a bit longer assumptions about it’s connection to the niscing about her role as the femme fatale of than she was with Pollock, even convincing artist’s personal life––especially since de the Cedar crowd, Ruth (who would later be the reluctant traveler to take her to Italy. Kooning’s affair with his young mistress portrayed by Jennifer Connelly in the film And if this book as a whole is the stuff of a lends itself so well to salacious musings. Yet “Pollock”) never told me that she also had major Hollywood movie, their affair alone whether or not this 1957 canvas is any more an affair with de Kooning. I only learned of was certainly tumultuous enough to qualify sexually inspired than many of de Kooning’s it recently in Stevens and Swan’s book: as a TV miniseries: other paintings is debatable, given the per- “In this extravagant period, the star of “Ruth relished the society and the vasive sensuousness in the oeuvre of the the scene took a theatrical lover. Hardly any- heightened mood of la dolce vita. Among artist who once said, “Flesh was the reason one at the Cedar who heard, in 1957, that the Italians, she was likened to––and occa- why oil painting was invented.”

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 Stevens and Swan are entirely correct, think there’s something creepy about it?” Kooning’s slow but steady decline into however, when they tell us that Ruth’s Noticing two female figures sketched Alzheimer’s dementia. Elaine had started Zowie is “an early example of de Kooning’s lightly in charcoal on a large canvas nearby, living with de Kooning again for the first muscular imperial style,” for he “seemed to I asked if he was gearing up to paint a new time in many years in 1978, weaning him throw his own body (not just an arm or a series of “Women.” from booze; taking over the hiring and fir- wrist) into the rhythms of the painting; the He shrugged. “Could be, but I never ing of household and studio help; carefully picture has his physical impress. This was know for sure what will happen. They may refashioning his image: “As the aging de the work of a painter at once public and just disappear into the paint. It happens all Kooning increasingly withdrew into his pri- personal, a master of his milieu, whose auto- the time.” Then, pointing to another large vate world, Elaine created a seductive per- biographical ‘mark’ created wonder and canvas across the studio he said, “So many sona for him. He became the grand old applause. His eye was his ‘I.’” of them turn out to be dogs like that big man with a mop of white hair, a Matisse for * * * purple one over there. At a certain point, the late twentieth century, walking about in I told myself it would be a nice gesture there’s nothing you can do about it, so I his painting overalls, lost in profound rever- to show up with a bottle of something just stop...” ies and yet smiling and full of charm.” when I went out to East Hampton one Studying the painting, an unfinished Although Elaine was not present to afternoon in 1982 to interview de Kooning abstraction in his late, linear, “ribbon” style, monitor him on the day that McWeeney for Rolling Stone. Having profiled celebri- of which it would have seemed presumptu- and I visited, this was indeed the docile ties in print for years (after discovering it ous for anyone else to make so flippant an master we met. And, despite his forgetful- was less stressful than trying to make a liv- assessment, he shook his head and said, ness, de Kooning remained productive, ing as a painter), I was not in the least “Boy, what a dog!” averaging “almost a painting a week” from impressed by famous people. Most of them Then, after a moment of reflection, he 1983 to 1986. According to Tom Ferrara, turned out to be smaller than life. But this added, “I probably shouldn’t complain, “for the most part his mind stayed largely was different. De Kooning was more than now that I have everything I need. It’s nice intact for a very large time, even after he merely famous; he was someone I had not to worry about eating or being able to started to repeat himself and do things that always revered, and I thought a drink or pay the light bill anymore, like when I lived made him outwardly seem off his rocker. two would relax me. So I was not happy in a loft on Tenth Street and my lights were He was capable of putting together very when I asked at the local liquor store what shut off and I had to run a wire out into complex ideas.” Mr. de Kooning liked to drink and the for- the hallway to steal electricity from the land- Disturbingly, however, in the late ’80s, as midable matron behind the counter lord. But a funny thing, painting never gets de Kooning’s dementia progressed, Elaine, answered pointedly, “Far as I know, Mr. de easier. Wouldn’t you think it would get a lit- who “stood to gain enormously from the Kooning is not supposed to drink.” tle easier after all these years? But, you sales of recent art” encouraged his studio As it turned out, de Kooning’s down to know, finishing one painting never solves assistants to take a more active role in the earth personality immediately put me at my the problem of the next one. You always production of his paintings. A new assistant ease. Although he had a brush in his hand have to start over the next day. Every morn- named Antoinette Gay, who was not trained when we arrived and I felt a little sheepish ing when I come into the studio to work, I as an artist, sometimes laid out his palette for interrupting his work, he seemed gen- feel like I could have the potential to do and “chose awkward colors.” Other assis- uinely amused when Alan McWeeney, the better somehow. I still want to do just one tants “selected drawings to project and then photographer assigned to my piece by terrific painting yet...” drew them onto the canvas for him, to start Rolling Stone, exclaimed in his thick Irish His candor was disarming. Here was the him painting.” Sometimes they would even brogue, “Why, you look like the living pro- greatest painter of our time and he was talk- “combine parts of different drawings to add totype of Gully Jimson!” ing to McWeeney and me as though we variety.” “Yah, is that so?” de Kooning said, obvi- were just three guys sitting around bullshit- “I tried to keep some sort of sense about ously tickled to be likened to the mad artist ting about this and that. Admittedly, he was them that would relate to what Bill was protagonist of Joyce Cary’s novel “The sometimes forgetful and repetitive when he working on at the time,” said an assistant Horse’s Mouth.” spoke of recent events. But he was quite named Robert Chapman. “Not deviate When McWeeney insisted on dragging lucid when he reminisced, especially about drastically.” de Kooning out into the chill evening air to his old friend Arshile Gorky, of whom he However, as Tom Ferrara admits, “The photograph him in what was left of the nat- said, “Gorky was the cat’s meow. Even temptation was to be overzealous,” and as ural light, his young assistant, Tom Ferrara, though he was self-taught and I had my the authors point out, “The problem was didn’t seem crazy about the idea. training from the Academy in Rotterdam, not that such interventions took place, but “Well, at least put a coat on, Bill,” he he was way ahead of me. But even before that the paintings continued to be treated as said, draping a shabby tweed sportjacket he got so sick and his wife left him, he was if they were completely de Kooning’s.” over the old man’s shoulders before he was always such a sadsack. You know, I could Intervention or not, one such painting, led out into the yard to pose gamely, as never understand why Gorky was so melan- from 1987, caught my eye the first time I though for a firing squad, a long-ashed cig- choly. After all, life is difficult enough with- flipped through de Kooning: An American arette shivering in his lips. out making a big deal out of it.” Master, after receiving the book up from “I guess this is the wages of fame,” I told publisher’s publicist. Although reproduced him, trying to finesse the situation. * * * in black and white, its flowing biomorphic “More like the wages of sin maybe,” de forms instantly reminded me of Arshile Kooning quipped. “During the spring of 1981, Gorky, Gorky. Then I noticed the title: “The Cat’s Back in the studio, when Ferrara demon- never far from his thoughts, became a par- Meow.” strated the new mechanical easel, custom ticularly powerful presence. ‘In a way,’ de built to turn and tilt large canvases at the Kooning said in the early eighties, ‘I have ––Ed McCormack touch of a button, de Kooning mock- him on my mind all the time.’” groused, “Never mind the paintings, that’s The passage above appears in the chapter * * * the first thing he shows off! To tell you the of Stevens and Swan’s book called “The truth, that thing embarrasses me. Don’t you Long Goodbye,” which chronicles de

22 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 The Existential Allegories of Romanian Artist Camelia Crisan Matei n recent decades there has been a rebirth raft after a shipwreck or a small Iof narrative painting. Unlike in earlier island on which they were centuries however, when the narratives were marooned. However, it was adrift on often tied in with communal myths or exist- a sea of dark faces in an enclosure ing institutions such as the church and were that could have been the bottom of therefore beholden to an established agen- a well. One man appeared to be levi- da, contemporary narrative paintings often tating. Another was elderly, with a take a more personal, poetic form. white beard and a hefty book beside One of the more interesting of these was him suggesting a sage who had fall- en on hard times, perhaps at the encountered in the recent exhibition of Painting by Camelia Crisan Matei Camelia Crisan Matei, at Montserrat hands of some sinister political Gallery, 584 Broadway. Born in Romania in regime. In fact, the setting itself could have to be more fortunate voyeurs, peering 1954, Matei, who has exhibited widely suggested a subterranean gulag with the through two long narrow skylights down throughout Europe and the United States, only light entering from a circular opening onto huddled crowds of men who also seem worked for several years as an art restorer at far above the men’s heads: The Hole. to be either inmates or workers. That one the National Art Museum, in Bucharest, In another painting by Camelia Crisan cannot be exactly certain of their role is one and elsewhere. This experience probably Matei from the same series, our vantage of the things that makes Matei’s paintings so contributed to her impressive technique in point seems to be that of the men below, for intriguing, for contemporary allegories, in oil on canvas, which lends her paintings a it depicts a circular shape ringed by the faces order to be convincing, must reflect the classical quality, despite their highly original of men peering down into the hole amid ambiguity of our anxious age. approach to subject matter. beams of light streaming through. These are Another thing that makes the work of Camelia Crisan Matei’s figures appear to obviously privileged beings who live in the Camelia Crisan Matei convincing is the inhabit a timeless realm. Although the set- outer world, the world of daylight. Thus quality of her painting. Working mainly with tings of her pictures have urban qualities, Matei makes us see the The Hole from both muted earth hues accented here and there they cannot be identified with certainty as sides and to empathize with the apparent with brighter colors, she evokes muted belonging to any known city or century. victims of her powerful existential allegory. atmospheres that contribute to the somber Some of the paintings shown at Montserrat Perhaps it is intended to tell us that we are mood of her scenes. While reminiscent of Gallery belonged to a series that the artist ourselves alternately victims and victimizers Goya’s dark view of humanity, these paint- calls “The Hole.” One such work depicted a in a world for which the hole is a personal ings reveal the vision of a uniquely contem- group of men in various stages of nakedness metaphor. porary narrative painter. on a white rectangular form suggesting a In another painting, we seem once again ––Chris Weller ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE The Relevance of Color February 2 - February 22, 2005 *Learn how to use your body correctly. Reception: Thursday, February 3, 6-8pm *Improve your posture. *Achieve lasting results.

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FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 Venturing “Beyond Borders” at the Venezuelan Center

arlos Osorio got special billing in Jennifer Andrews, on the other Tannenbaum’s latest canvases are Cthe exhibition “Beyond Borders,” hand, employs the most muted colors enlivened by sweeping rhythms and at the Venezuelan Center gallery, 7 and the sparest possible paint applica- buoyant pastel colors that evoke, with- East 51st Street, since the show was tion to create large figurative composi- out descriptively depicting, a sense of announced as a fine arts exhibition by tions in a stain technique on raw linen rhythmically rolling hills, as well as the “Metropolitan Artists and one and unprimed canvas. Andrews’ combi- chromatic richness of nature. It would Venezuelan Artist.” nation of thinned down oil washes, appear that in his recent work, beeswax, and charcoal lends the figures Tannenbaum has embraced the alter- As many of us who follow the New the qualities of phantoms. However, nate definition of the abstract as “the York art scene know, Metropolitan they are not apparitions of the super- concentrated essence of a larger Artists is a twenty-five year old arts natural kind, but, rather, ghosts of whole,” (as opposed to something organization operating under the aus- memory. In one composition, a woman devoid of specific reference), without pices of West Side Arts Coalition, and in a filmy white slip stands at what sacrificing any of the purely formal and boasts among its membership some of appears to be a kitchen counter, while material qualities that have always dis- the more interesting and frequented the heads of two women are seen in tinguished his paintings. exhibited New York painters and the foreground and the partial figure sculptors. of a man is truncated abruptly by the Brian Tepper is a toughminded right hand edge of the canvas. The sculptor whose work has an appealing Osorio’s inclusion with this group sense of fragmentation recalls both de crankiness that does not endeavor to was obviously contingent on the Kooning’s early figurative paintings endear itself to us but invariably does venue, a cultural arm of the Consulate and the work of Larry Rivers. anyway. Tepper’s “Suspended,” a work of the Bolivarian Republic of However, Andrews also conveys the in marble and steel, is a wiggly vertical Venezuela, and he emerges as an excit- sense of a submerged narrative with form that inhabits space with what can ing new discovery. His paintings are elusive psychological implications. only be termed an awkward grace. The relatively modest in size but have an Equally suggestive in another manner same can be said of other sculptures in impact that transcends scale by virtue is large painting in which Andrews marble or in limestone, wood, and of his ability to surprise us with unex- depicts two water birds wallowing in a cement, in which Tepper manages to pected juxtapositions. In one picture, desolate industrial landscape, their wil- invest lumpish forms that are not for example, a large snake encircles a lowy, graceful forms contrasting curva- innately beautiful with a fresh, funky tiny rabbit like a serpentine arabesque. ceously with the hard geometric lines elegance. In another, a large crocodile and a of the mechanistic structures with small turtle stroll along together in an which we impinge upon their natural Estelle Pascoe is another artist who oddly companionable manner. In a habitat. flies in the face of ordinary beauty with third canvas, a bird emerges from a her rough-hewn mixed media dimen- shell in a natural setting codified in a Those of us familiar with the previ- sional wall pieces which hover between semi-abstract style notable for its for- ous nonobjective paintings of the painting and sculpture. Craggy and mal and textural qualities. For Osorio, adamantly hard-edged artist Michele twisted, saturated with so much color the animal kingdom becomes a Bonelli could not help being taken that the various hues tend to cancel metaphor for a wide range of concerns. aback by the degree to which she has each other, Pascoe’s hybrid works seem His depictions of wild critters engaged allowed recognizable elements to enter more like archeological finds rescued in the struggle to survive resonate with into her compositions in the series that from antiquity than deliberately con- a host of human meanings. she calls “Urban Abstracts.” Yet these ceived art objects. Pascoe’s “Blue Zen” new works are some of Bonelli’s most is particularly engaging with its combi- By contrast, in Barbara Yeterian’s engaging canvases to date, with the nation of deep and electric blues and “Bird Series,”subject matter is austere yet jazzy allusions to architec- its flaring, layered forms overlapping in employed mainly to launch furious ges- tural details, water towers, subway cars, space like calligraphic brush strokes tural abstractions. For while Yeterian’s and other actual things delineated in rendered in three dimensions. parrot-like avians are formidable in a sharp black outlines and bright, flat manner that recalls Leonard Baskin’s areas of color that simultaneously make Miriam Wills also made a strong black and white “Raptors,” often one think of comic strips and the impression with her peculiar brand of paired with poems by Ted Hughes American Scene modernism of Stuart neo-cubistic structuring in vortex-like about birds of prey, her primary con- Davis. This mode of post-Pop abstrac- compositions combining photographic cerns are painterly. Brilliantly colored tion seems a logical and fruitful direc- fragments snipped from magazines plumage provides her an opportunity tion for Bonelli, an extension rather with vigorous expressionist brushwork. for generating richly pigmented than a reversal of her longstanding aes- Wills’ palette of brilliant reds, greens, pyrotechnics derived from the vocabu- thetic agenda. and blues imbue her compositions with lary of action painting. Thus Yeterian’s a glistening, jewel-like quality, the “Bird Series” engages us on an optical Meyer Tannenbaum, a frequent co- sheen of her paint surfaces matching and visceral level with a flurry of exhibitor and artistic colleague of the glossy printing inks of her collage brushstrokes that simultaneously Bonelli, has also undergone a some- elements in fanciful floral compositions deconstructs her subjects with and what startling transformation in his that fairly burst with ripe vitality. Like projects an immediate, highly kinetic “Soft Impact” series, where allusions the other artists singled out for men- sense of their energy and flight to landscape have increasingly tion in this extensive exhibition, she through her use of vibrant color laid informed his formerly process-oriented has arrived at a distinctive personal down in tactile impastos. aesthetic. Lyrical and rapturous, style. ––Lawrence Downes

24 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Paradoxes of Ruggedness and Delicacy in the Oils of Young-Doo Song n his native Korea, Young-Doo Song is purple and yellow that Ihighly esteemed as a representative of all lend the composition a that is progressive in contemporary painting. chromatic subtlety. His inclusion in exhibitions such as “The Texture also plays an Waves of Korean Contemporary Art” at the important role in the can- Insa Gallery, Seoul, and “Korean Fine Arts vases of Young-Doo Song, Today,” at the Seoul Arts Center, among especially in the places other prestigious surveys, positions him where his forms converge, among the vanguard in a country where art creating ridges of rolled is at a point of national pride. He has also back pigment that one can shown extensively in the United States, only assume are achieved most recently in a brilliant solo show at with the palette knife tech- Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, on the nique and which add not strength of which one may safely predict only tactile appeal but also that he should soon have a considerable fol- a subtle linearity to his lowing in this country as well. compositions. However, All of the paintings in the latter exhibition these are the pictures of a were oils on canvas in Young-Doo Song’s “pure” painter––which is “The Mythic Mind” distinctive style of abstract color construc- to say one who puts all of tion akin to that of the Russian-born artist his trust in painterly rather than draftsmanly ruggedness, which lends them a decidedly Nicholas de Stael, who became one of the processes. Thus Young-Doo Song’s paint- metaphysical dimension as well. leading painters of postwar France. Like de ings would appear to owe little to the Asian Indeed it is such contrasts and contradic- Stael, Young-Doo Song applies paint thickly, ink painting tradition. Perhaps traces of tions that make the paintings of Young-Doo apparently with a palette knife in impastoed other, more folkloric forms of Korean art Song so engaging. For here is a painter areas of vibrant color. Although there is a could be turned up by scholarly research, obviously enamored of the physical act of hint of landscape space in his compositions, but for the most part the main thrust of painting and willing to let it lead him wher- as well as a sense of atmospheric mists, sug- these paintings would appear to be much in ever it may go. And the discoveries that he gesting natural allusions, his paintings are the Western tradition. They are concerned makes along the way regarding the physical essentially abstract. They are complex struc- with materiality, as opposed to the ethereal properties of form, color, and texture, as tures built with broad, generally rectangular nature of much Eastern painting. At the well as the host of associations they can areas of color, distinguished for their lumi- same time, there is a paradoxical lyricism to evoke, makes following him on his journey a nosity. Blue and green hues are prominent them as well, a poetic quality, a certain highly pleasurable and enlightening experi- in some of his paintings, offset by areas of counterbalancing delicacy alongside their ence. ––Lawrence Downes Todd A. Mosley: A Midwest Painter Celebrates Spain odd A. Mosley, an artist from scape, with its groves, stretches of earth, sound surreal, it actually depicts a street per- TCincinnati, Ohio, whose paintings were and frosty, roiling cloud formations above. former, capturing his humble little act with recently featured in a solo exhibition at Taken together, the three panels are like great sympathy and humor. Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, has stanzas in an ode to the ripe beauty of the Mosley’s ability to capture character is also obviously absorbed a great deal of inspira- land, which the artist makes manifest in the evident in a series of paintings based on fla- tion from an extensive period of residency in lushness of the pigment itself. menco musicians and dancers. “La Guitarra Spain. While abroad, working part time Mosley’s ability to conjure up not only Flamenca” is a large painting of a bearded, teaching English as a foreign language, he the appearance but the spirit of the land also longhaired guitarist set against a vibrant was able to devote most of his free time to comes across in paintings such as “El blue ground that calls to mind some of painting, as well as to travel throughout Pueblo de Conil de la Frontera,” and Picasso’s early figurative works. By contrast, Europe. “Ronda,” with their dramatic juxtaposition- a series of smaller compositions in a hori- Returning to the United States in 2002, ing of austere white structures, dramatic zontal format captures the colorful cos- Mosley brought with him a body of work skies, mountains, waterfalls, and other natu- tumes, energy, and movement of flamenco distinguished for its merger of realism and ral and man-made elements in compositions dancers. Here, too, Mosley’s abilities as a expressive brushwork. His paintings are that compel our attention with their sense colorist and compositional skills make these filled with great drama, light, and texture of, color, light, and space. Indeed, Mosley’s intimate compositions enjoyable for their that extends to both his landscape and figu- landscapes are invariably as arresting for abstract qualities as well as for his ability to rative subjects. Turbulent cloud formations, their formal attributes as for their ability to capture the flair and verve of his subjects. picturesque architecture, and subtle color conjure up a specific sense of pace. Yet another facet of Mosley’s work can be combinations all contribute to the atmos- The human figure also plays a prominent seen in his nocturnal city views, their dark pheric quality of his compositions, which role in some of Mosley’s paintings, as seen skies streaked with luminous pink and yel- invariably impress one with their freshness in the pictures entitled, respectively, “La low hues that set off the majestic Spanish and immediacy. Esposa Gitana” and “El Gitano y su Perro architecture and lend these paintings a Mosley’s triptych “Andalusia in Fall” is Bailarin,” the former is an evocative study of heightened sense of atmosphere verging on comprised of three long, horizontal panels an old peasant woman, while the latter the visionary. in which areas of sky and earthy terrain are depicts an elderly man with a crumpled hat ––Wilson Wong evoked in thick green and ocher impastos blowing a bugle while a little dog in a dress that lend weight and depth to the land- dances on a leash. While this scene may FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 Drawing as Finished Statement in the Art of Sara Kaiser

s a feature article on an exhibition at fragmented images which, although scat- unexpectedly lovely spatial tensions. Equally AThe Drawing Center in Soho in this tered over the picture space in a seemingly dynamic in formal terms is a drawing called publication made clear some issues back, casual way, cohere marvelously, creating an “Shunga Piece,” the title referring to the drawing has come into its own as a major impression of the lyrical fragmentations of generic term given to traditional Japanese art form as opposed to merely a vehicle for memory. Some of the images include a pair erotic paintings and prints. Here, the subject studies and preliminary sketches. One artist of eyeglasses precisely delineated in pencil, is an explicit image of a couple making love, whose work personifies this trend is Sara an unfinished sketch of a horse’s head, a col- possibly inspired by a specific Shunga of the Kaiser, whose exhibition of mixed media laged fragment of a map of Kentucky, and type that has appeared in prints and books drawings was seen recently at Montserrat the scrawled word “stop.” Although one in Japan for centuries. However, rather than Gallery, 584 Broadway. has no way of knowing for certain, it being in the clear outlines common to the genre, Kaiser’s decisive draftspersonship is a joy part of the charm of Kaiser’s drawings that Kaiser has treated the figures in an expres- to behold. She draws beautifully and selects they are filled with arcane personal refer- sionistic manner, with their forms defined by subjects that enable her to make all manner ences that one can only attempt to decipher, a welter of pencil strokes that activate the of poetic allusions. She has obviously stud- the latter element could almost suggest that image in a new way. Now, instead of being a ied the old masters, as well as contempo- the artist is reminding herself to stop the static image, the drawing has a kinetic quali- raries such as Gorky, de Kooning and Larry drawing while it is in that exquisitely spare ty suggesting the actual rhythmic move- Rivers. The elliptical nature of her composi- state that is so characteristic of her style. ments of fornication. At the same time, the tions is especially reminiscent of the latter And indeed, each of her compositions is image is paradoxically formalized and artist. She takes figurative or still life subjects very much like a good poem in the sense abstracted so that its aesthetic rather than its that in the hands of another artist might be that the addition of one more thing could erotic content is its most salient feature. academic and transforms them through a possibly threaten its beautiful brevity and It is just her ability to transform whatever variety of deconstructive strategies. perfect aesthetic balance. she draws in this manner that makes Sara In Kaiser’s collage drawing, Even more spare is a drawing called Kaiser a fascinating and highly rewarding “Recollections of Kentucky,” for one splen- “Doctor Land,” in which an airplane is exponent of drawing as a discrete and self- did example, she conveys a diaristic sense of dynamically angled in sharp lines on a run- sufficient medium. time spent in that state through various way, the ostensibly banal subject yielding ––Maureen Flynn The Enchantment of Gort’s “Classical Surrealism” orn in Catalonia and trained at the rules and give all manner of incongruous BRoyal Academy of Fine Arts in elements a unique coherence by virtue of Madrid, Josep Maria Gort, generally his combination of technical mastery and referred to only as Gort, represents surre- imaginative reach. One becomes com- alism in its classical form, in that his pletely submerged in Gort’s private world, accomplished, crystal clear figurative where all things are possible and the unex- technique is reminiscent of Dali and pected is commonplace. Magritte. He resembles those masters for Another painting in the recent exhibi- his meticulous transcription of dreamlike tion at Montserrat Gallery, for example, imagery in a manner so flawless as to ren- depicted two men in a landscape that der even his most fanciful visions oddly might serve as a stage set for one of the believable. However, being a man of the existential scenarios of an avant garde play- postmodern era, obviously attuned to the wright like Samuel Beckett or Eugene all-encompassing way that the mass Ionesco. One thinks of Beckett’s “Waiting media, with its relentless proliferation of for Godot,” or Ionesco’s mixture of surre- popular imagery, has intruded on con- alism and social satire, viewing Gort’s unti- temporary consciousness, his work also tled oil of these two men, wearing aprons, shows a decided Pop influence as well. one propped up on the other’s shoulders Which is to say, Groucho Marx in the like an acrobatic clown in a desert-like company of a young female nude with space under roiling clouds, painted in the proportions of a Playboy centerfold is Gort’s characteristically precise, yet expres- as likely to turn up in one of his paintings “L’emperadriu Tiziana” sive manner. Surely they must be actors in as Durer dressed in a business suit with some absurdist drama complete with props the Mona Lisa leaning over his shoulder. painting on an easel and seen through an such as birds atop long poles, the precise However, the centerpiece of Gort’s most open window. meaning of which eludes easy explication. recent exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 584 The composition is fascinating for its syn- Yet the situation somehow resonates for the Broadway, was “L’emperadriu Tiziana,” in thesis of classical balance and postmodern viewer, presenting us with an aspect of the which he simultaneously pays tribute to and imagistic deconstruction. Gort’s own classi- human condition that we somehow intu- transforms the great classical court painting. cal grounding and mastery of old masterish itively understand, even if it is impossible to In Gort’s version, the royal lady, with her oil painting technique enables him to make explain. Indeed, it is this ability to delineate intricately braided hairstyle and elaborate this synthesis not only convincing but aes- the inexplicable in terms that compel our gown of silk and brocade is set within a thetically appealing in a manner that tran- admiration that makes Josep Maria Gort, fragmented composition containing multiple scends time periods and aesthetic fashions. whose work can be seen year-round in images of herself superimposed over frag- Confronted with “L’emperadriu Tiziana,” Montserrat Gallery’s ongoing salon exhibi- ments of landscape that are also multiplied, we know immediately that we are in the tion, an artist of the first rank. appearing in both a painting-within-the- presence of a painter who can make his own ––Byron Coleman

26 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Formal and Figurative Enigmas in the Art of Nigel Bowen-Morris op Art came about as a reaction to bright color within bold, black PAbstract Expressionism. By introducing outlines. elements of the cartoon and other banal One may discern kinships to subject matter into the theretofore purist both Keith Haring and Nicholas precincts of modernist painting, a younger Krushenick in Bowen-Morris’ generation of artists critiqued the pious lyri- work for its clarity of color and cal excesses of their elders. The contempo- form. However, he is considerably rary Welsh-born painter Nigel Bowen- more abstract than the former Morris, however, has evolved a peculiarly painter, yet more allusive than the postmodern resolution to the conflict that latter. In other words, his pictures divided his predecessors. are impossible to categorize, even As artist in residence at Agora Gallery’s as they suggest sympathies with “Devil and Broken Angel” Chelsea location, 530 West 25th Street, sources as diverse as Dubuffet’s evocative paintings, however, are an untitled from January 4 through April 4, Bowen- doodle-like “Hourloupe” series and the series of large horizontal canvases executed Morris’ work is on view for an extended Chicago school of painters known as The entirely in lamp black, cobalt blue, and tita- period of time, and deservedly so, since his Hairy Who. nium white, in which the forms are less figu- paintings present a successful and witty syn- The figurative references are most overt in ratively suggestive than evocative of land- thesis of opposing tendencies. Working in paintings such as “Devil and Broken scape and a wide range of natural (and per- oils, yet employing them in the flat, hard- Angel,” where the two white forms wig- haps even cosmic) phenomena. In these edge color areas that we generally associate gling on a solid red ground do indeed sug- paintings, a variety of flat, precisely rendered with acrylics, Bowen-Morris creates large gest supernatural personages distilled to yet irregularly expressive, shapes inhabit the canvases reflecting the epoch-making scale their cartoon essence, and “Spilt in Trinity,” picture plane like wiggling spermatozoa and and ambition of both the Abstract where even genitals and rib cages are sug- other vital organic matter viewed through a Expressionists and their Pop vanquishers. gested by Bowen-Morris’ loopy outlines. Yet microscope. At the same time, these shapes Yet there is a wit and levity about Bowen- even these paintings fascinate us more for could also suggest clusters of oddly shaped Morris’ work that is uniquely his own. It has their formal configurations than for the nar- comicstrip speech-balloons, albeit enigmati- to do not only with the deadpan quality of rative elements that their titles suggest. cally devoid of dialogue. Indeed, it is the his paint surfaces, which are as impassive as (None of which is to say that the two odd ability to create such conundrums, infinitely Buster Keaton’s facial expression, but with characters in the latter painting, who resem- redolent of the human condition, yet just as the weird suggestiveness of his forms, never ble inflatable extraterrestrials with the air compelling for their purely plastic qualities, fully figurative, never wholly abstract. partially let out, do not exert a certain extra- that makes Nigel Bowen-Morris a uniquely Slippery shapes shift between abstract forms formal fascination!) rewarding painter. and cartoon-like personages defined by flat, Some of Nigel Bowen-Morris’ most ––Lawrence Downes Abstract 2004: Picturing the Sublime f abstract painting had become so under- Maryann Sussoni, on the other hand, The paintings of Leila R. Elias suggest not Ivalued by the mid 1980s that it could be allows a subtle allusiveness to enter into her so much the shapes of specific flowers but degraded by a parody movement such as paintings yet resists specific description. the energy of organic growth. Elias’ deep, Neo-Geo, the past three decades have seen a Thus it is possible to speculate on the sug- rich colors and sensually articulated biomor- revitalization of nonobjective painting and gestiveness of her blue orbs and thorny lin- phic forms belong to the tradition of sculpture that has been heartening to ear swirls in paintings such as “Centering” Baziotes and Stamos, yet transcend it to behold. Its ongoing evolution was evident and “Shamanic Consciousness.” become deeply personal statements, pos- in “Abstract 2004, an exhibition by the Leanne Martinson’s works in oil and oil sessed of mystery and a reverence for the West Side Arts Coalition, at Broadway Mall pastel from her “Midtown Traffic” series natural world. Community Center, on the center island at combine formal stasis and inner movement. Other innovative approaches to contem- 96th Street and Broadway. Boldly articulated shapes hold the surface, porary abstraction were seen in Lori Lata’s Peg McCreary’s lyrical paintings feature while vibrant bits of color glow through compositions of sensual forms in an offbeat splashes, spatters and drips of color on white Martinson’s dark linear networks, creating a pastel palette, transforming actual subjects or cream colored grounds. Although tantalizing chromatic “push and pull.” such as a balcony in the Canary Islands or McCreary mines a mode of expression pio- Miguel Angel (as he now prefers to be the figures of a man and a woman into codi- neered by Pollock and others, she employs a known) increasingly comes across as an fied color areas; Farhana Akhter’s more deliberate, formal method, containing abstract mystic in mixed media assemblages “Camouflage” paintings, with their darkly all of her energetic pyrotechnics as a discrete such as “The First Day of the Rest of My dramatic colors and fleeting suggestions of entity within the rectangle of the picture Life.” With its silvery frame, areas of glass, figures that make the title of the series seem area. and electric backlighting, Angel’s austere especially apt; Eleanor Gilpatrick’s dramatic Texture is paramount in the paintings of composition evokes dawn breaking in a win- abstract evocation of landscape in bold Diane G. Casey. In one particularly com- dow and projects an affecting spiritual aura. streaks of color; Brunie Feliciano’s tantaliz- pelling painting she creates a tactile grid of Pud Houstoun’s small, paintings are filled ing combination of stately geometric for- impastos applied with a palette knife, while with swagger, verve, and panache. Their malism and fluorescent chromatic fireworks; in another composition, incised forms enliv- decisive strokes, artful drips, and richness of and new paintings from Meyer en a field of red and blue hues. All of Casey’s both color and gesture create miniature Tannenbaum’s breakthrough “Soft Impact” paintings appear concerned with the subtle odes to the abstract expressionist aesthetic, series, discussed elsewhere in this issue. qualities of materiality, the painting as physi- suggesting a scale and a scope much grander ––Carl Farber cal object as opposed to allusive vehicle. than their actual physical dimensions. FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 Liquescence and Suspension in the Art of Jessica Houston

essica Houston is a painter whose natural Houston brings a wide range of techniques Jelement appears to be water. Houston, to bear on her subject, making each picture whose list of exhibition credits includes a a unique interpretation of the experience of group exhibition at The Metropolitan plunging into those watery depths. In the Museum of Art, not only collects water show’s largest oil on canvas, “Buoyant samples from around the world, but creates Vortex Rings,” for example, the nude oil paintings in which figures are seen swim- female swimmer is suspended weightlessly ming in bodies of water. against a luminous blue expanse. Here Several of her paintings and a large tray, again, the artist undercuts the overall realism suspended from the ceiling and filled with of the composition with the addition of plastic containers of water from exotic rivers white linear swirls that capture a feeling clos- such as the Ganges, were seen in Houston’s er to the larger truth of the experience than recent solo exhibition, “Fathoms,” at Jadite to its obvious actuality. Thus the painting Galleries, 413 West 50th Street. takes on a visionary power that transcends “The oil paintings investigate the physical representation, a mystical aspect that and psychic suspension of figures underwa- expresses the artist’s deep fascination with ter, apprehending a momentary stasis before water, which she has explored in poetic an inevitable disappearance,” Houston prose texts, as well as in the medium of oil wrote in an artist’s statement accompanying painting. the show. “The infinitely transparent ele- Other canvases, such as “Dis/appearance ment of water reveals the impermanence of II” and “Instability,” capture the sense of the subject, suggesting an ephemeral buoy- discombobulation that one can experience ancy—a suspended instant of held breath, a in water through dramatic cropping and fleeting idea, a swell of emotion.” energetic brush work, with parts of the fig- Obviously, Houston knows just what she “Internal Waves” ure either abruptly amputated by the edges is aiming for, and her paintings succeed dimension. of the canvas or deconstructed by vigorous splendidly in capturing that instant of grace, By contrast, a smaller painting called gestural paint handling. as in “Buoyancy Effect,” where a nubile “Surface and Depth Interface,” depicts only Indeed, the fluidly liquescent qualities of female nude takes on an ethereal quality, an expanse of water, sans figure, in convinc- her subject enable Jessica Houston to com- soaring in a luminous watery space. ing aquamarine hues, with subtle variations bine figurative realism with loose, painterly Although the figure is depicted in a detailed of light and shadow adding to its verisimili- passages akin to abstract expressionism, realist manner, her aqueous surroundings tude. Here, too, however, there is the sense making her compositions not only symboli- are evoked more fancifully, with white bub- of a lingering human presence, as though cally evocative but compellingly immediate bles rendered in a stylized linear manner. By the swimmer has just left the picture in purely visual terms. departing to some degree from naturalistic space––conveying that sense of “inevitable ––Maurice Taplinger interpretation, Houston infuses the compo- disappearance” of which the artist speaks. sition with a sense of magic, a metaphysical An impressively resourceful painter, Fetish and Fascination in the Art of Steven John Harris he British painter Steven John Harris, obsession, and sometimes thwarted desire. viewer makes imaginative leaps between the Tborn in Plymouth Devonshire in 1955, Indeed, for his fascination with the human symbolic and the actual quite effortlessly. is an autodidact with a highly sophisticated body as a conduit of emotional tension, the In another painting called “Heels,” we are approach to composition. Confronting one only other painter one can compare Harris plunged into the realm of fetishism in a of Harris’s paintings, we are often con- to is Francesco Clemente, the contemporary composition where a languidly statuesque founded by what appear to be anatomical Italian artist, who once said, “My overall female figure in stiletto heels that seem to anomalies of a most peculiar kind, until we strategy as an artist is to accept fragmenta- dominate the composition from the angle sort out the different parts of different bod- tion and to see what comes of it.” that the artist chooses to present them to us ies appearing in extreme close-up and are Like Clemente, Steven John Harris makes casually gooses a companion while a third able to piece them back together in some use of ambiguity, employing it to endow his figure, seen in the foreground, radiates an logical order in our minds. For Harris has paintings with a strong sense of psychosexu- anxiety reminiscent of the haunted subject an odd, sometimes vertiginous, way of crop- al drama. Harris, however, also has an of Edvard Munch’s famous work, “The ping his pictures that makes them at once abstract element to his work that lends it an Scream.” disconcerting and seductive in ways that autonomous visual impact. He employs bril- Face to Face with Harris’s “Hunger,” in made a visitor to Harris’s recent solo exhibi- liant color in clear, boldly delineated areas which a blue man reaches out needily to tion at Montserrat Galley, 584 Broadway, much in the manner of a hard edge abstrac- caress a pair of pink breasts, and “Blue immediately aware of being in the presence tionist to make his pictures practically leap Guys,” where two similarly colorful figures of a delightfully quirky and highly original off the wall and accost the viewer with their are seen in voyeuristic proximity to a nude talent. curvaceously sensual forms. woman, we too become fascinated voyeurs. Although Harris is self taught, there is In one painting, entitled “Mary Lips,” To the league of modern British artists, such nothing naive or innocent about his work. the head of a woman with big red lips as Bacon, Hockney and Hodgkin, whom we Rather, his paintings are almost wickedly appears to have a nude body of a smaller admire as much for their quirky qualities as knowing about the convoluted entangle- person draped over it like a bizarre hat. for their solid aesthetic attributes, we can ments of human relationships. The people Harris makes this strange occurrence appear now add the name of Steven John Harris. in his pictures interact in ways that suggest somehow logical by virtue of his ability to ––Peter Wiley all the possible permutations of love, lust, bend all the rules of composition so that the

28 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Discovering Kathleen King’s Gorgeous Gum-Ball Universe

quirky biomorphism yet appear to allude to a Ahas long been a salient wide range of biological feature of much of the and cellular phenomena best art emanating from animated by imagination The Windy City. Many of and intuition. us first became aware of “It’s about taking the bits the qualities peculiar to and pieces directly from life Chicago art when The and reassembling them to Hairy Who, a group of make poetic or metaphorical artists associated with the statements about the experi- Art Institute of Chicago, ence of being alive,” King first burst upon the scene stated in a recent interview. in the 1960s. Suddenly And her paintings do New York Pop look pallid indeed convey a generalized and constipated compared sense of joie de vivre that, to the zany havoc that as the artists puts it, touches artists such as James Nutt, upon “the poetic, musical, Seymour Rosofsky, and and picturesque as opposed Gladys Nilsson wrought to just the socio-political.” upon the human figure. In King’s acrylic and One thing was immediate- mixed media collage on ly clear: While even many canvas “Ellipse, 1,” a central figurative painters in New saucer-like form swirls York were somewhat dynamically among various swayed by the austere brilliantly colored orbs formal strategies of resembling the stylized eye- Minimalism, Chicago balls favored as imagery by artists were Maximalists to Japan’s “Superflat” move- the core, cramming every ment. However, King’s inch of the picture space painting is characteristically with a hair-raising variety cosmic, rather than car- of lively visual activity. toon-like, making it far A similarly teeming more poetically allusive and vitality is turned to more evocative. abstract ends in the paint- A large leaf-shape domi- ings of Kathleen King, a nates the emblematic com- former adjunct assistant position of another mixed professor at the School of media work called the Art Institute of “Ellipticity,” creating the Chicago, now an adjunct sense of a botanical icon; while more intricate config- professor at Loyola “Squigglesque” 2005 24 x 17 1/2 x 1 1/2" University, whose first urations of organic forms New York solo exhibition “Plastic The critic James Thrall Soby once enliven King’s “Botanica Series,” an Pictorials” can be seen at Viridian Artists termed Tanguy’s infinite spaces filled with installation of several oval and circular can- @ Chelsea, 530 West 25th Street, from imaginary objects “a sort of boneyard of vases. Other mixed media collage paint- March 15 through April 2. (There will be the world.” However, in contrast to the ings such as “Bubblelacious” a reception for the artist on March 19 somber hues and desolate atmosphere of Squiggleseques” feature overall composi- from 3 to 6 PM.) Tanguy’s deserts of irregular organic tions aswarm with a multitude of Two important catalysts for the genera- forms, King’s invented realm is more like a colorful, roughly circular shapes (albeit tion of Chicago artists that preceded King candy-colored cosmos: a gorgeous gum interspersed in the latter work with were Jean Dubuffet, the French father of ball universe of almost edibly luscious sinuous linear elements). Art Brut, who lectured at the Chicago pinks, reds, yellows, and blues. Kathleen King’s mixed media pieces can Arts Club in 1951, and the Chilean surre- King employs photographic floral be compared to those of Lucas Samaras alist Matta, who taught at the School of images altered with a computer as collage for their hypnotic horror vacuii intricacy, the Art Institute during the same period. elements (although by the time she finish- which rewards careful study with multiple While her Hairy Who predecessors seem es with them they have been transformed levels of visual/intellectual stimulation. to have been most influenced by beyond recognition), along with drawn Obsessive, suggestive, elusive, the imagistic Dubuffet’s raw figurative style, derived and painted passages, in her vibrant mixed and chromatic richness of her composi- from the art of children and mental media paintings. Like Joe Brainard’s intri- tions draw the viewer into an inner world patients, King’s work veers more toward cate fetish altar collages and Fred at once mysterious and informed by a Matta’s merger of the abstract and the sur- Tomaselli’s assemblages made with thou- unique wit. King, whose work has been real. Indeed the swarming profusion of sands of pharmaceutical pills, floral seen in numerous venues in the United shapes in King’s compositions hark even designs, leaves, and animal cutouts, King’s States and abroad, brings a singular sensi- further back to the work of Yves Tanguy, compositions present us with a baroque bility to bear in this auspicious New York whose odd biomorphic forms obviously profusion of fanciful forms. In King’s case, solo debut. influenced Matta. however, they defy specific interpretation, ––Ed McCormack

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 Joan Albright: A Painter’s Journey to Realms Unknown

rtists arrive at their aesthetic values as for the mystical ideas that Adirection by a seemingly limitless they propagate. In other words, one number of methods and inspirations. can enjoy her work on a variety of Few, however, employ means as mys- different levels, but one will probably tical as those of Joan Albright, an get the most out of them by being artist born in Toledo, Ohio, and willing to take the imaginative jour- trained at the American Academy of ney that her paintings suggest. Art in Chicago and the Denver Art Surely those of us who remember Museum who has exhibited most the psychedelic art movement of the widely in Colorado and California and late 1960s will perceive a certain whose work is in private and public affinity in Albright’s work with the collections in the U.S. and overseas. intricate compositions of artists such For Albright claims to have made a as Mati Klarwein and Isaac Abrams. breakthrough with supernatural impli- Albright, however, has a way with cations in her “channeled paintings,” forms and colors which also suggests which are on view permanently in the a kinship with an older tradition of “Planetary Harmony and Equality” ongoing salon exhibition at fantastic landscape painting, as well as Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, in Soho. actual cosmic expanses and forms that with the early, spiritually-inspired abstrac- In a recent artist’s statement, Albright emerge from plumbing the subconscious in tions of Wassily Kandinsky. explained that her method involves “allow- dreams or meditation. Perhaps they touch Her compositions often suggest unearthly ing myself to become an instrument of the upon dimensions where intuition and imagi- terrains, as well as the underlying energies of cosmic energy beneath all form and matter, nation converge. In any case, they are nature and elements such as fire and water, to become unencumbered by the manipula- intriguingly evocative and compelling for moving in rhythmic waves, forming maze- tion of my intellect, beyond words and their intricate linear permutations, which like configurations that appear to swell and thoughts, pure in its own expression of flow and flare in compositions charged with waver before one’s eyes, projecting a con- color and light...” undeniable energy and further enlivened by stant sense of flux. Whether or not one subscribes to such a unique radiance. However, this sense of energy is achieved notions, one cannot help but be impressed Unlike some visionary artists, who create with smooth paint application and clear, by the rhythmic grace of the forms and the by intuition alone, Albright has made a con- translucent color areas, rather than through chromatic brilliance of the colors in scious progression over the years from a spontaneous paint manipulation or gestural Albright’s acrylic, oil, and watercolor com- more or less traditional realist style to her agitation, as though Joan Albright is indeed positions. As titles such as “Intergalactic present mode, which she terms “semi- meticulously transcribing visions and forms Communication,” “Interdimensional abstract philosophical expression.” Thus her that emanate from some mysterious and Doorway,” and “Canyon of the work has a solid foundation in sophisticated marvelous source outside of herself. Unconscious” indicate, her paintings evoke formal exploration that makes her paintings ––Pheobe Harrison Wood images of both outer and inner space––of every bit as exciting for their pure plastic Troy David: Passionate Visions of Mythic Forbearance astels are often typecast as a genteel his depiction of a sensual female nude. head that regards the viewer from under a Pmedium, employed primarily for land- By contrast, in both “Uncertain Future” wide-brimmed Stetson with the squint-eyed scape, still life, and figurative subjects in a and “Street Corner Santa” David gives us stare reminiscent of Clint Eastwood in “A conventional realist manner. Of course, this affecting images of down-and-out individu- Fistfull of Dollars.” Similarly redolent of notion has been given the lie by the innova- als as vividly evoked as the oils of the macho male mythology is the bearded way- tive pastels of artists such as Lucas Samaras, intrepid Depression era social realist Philip farer in “Ordeal of the Traveler,” who looks and more recently, another highly original Evergood. Indeed, like Evergood, David as though he has been through some tough artist named Troy David has emerged as an does not hesitate to go slightly over the top travels and put a lot of rocky road behind enfant terrible of the medium in his recent to get us to empathize with the plight of the him, yet bears his lot with indomitable sto- exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 584 homeless citizens who increasingly haunt icism of a born survivor. Broadway. the streets of our cities. His destitute Santa Indeed, such paintings appear to be sym- Born in 1969 in Minnesota, now living is an especially strong statement, clutching bolic, if not literal self-portraits. For Troy and working in North Dakota, David is his beggar’s cup, his fake beard half falling David is apparently an independent artistic known for his vigorous expressionist figura- off like an errant bib. spirit whose vision flies in the face of much tive works, painted to the accompaniment David’s willingness to push the envelope, that is fashionable in contemporary art in of rock and roll music, which appears to so to speak, is especially apparent in his pic- order to make deeply felt personal state- influence his strident use of color and bold ture “The Head of Christ,” in which bril- ments. There is no trendy irony in his work compositional rhythms. The versatility of liant red blood trickles down the face of a and seemingly even less fear of coming pastels is such that it can be applied as either Jesus as expressively distorted as one of across mawkish or sentimental. He is obvi- a drawing or painting medium, and David’s Francis Bacon’s portraits. This is an intense- ously more deeply committed to expressing work is decidedly in the latter category, for ly visceral interpretation, close in spirit to his belief that injustice must be met with he lays down dry color in concentrated the tortured Christ figures of Gruenwald, courage and forbearance than to kowtowing strokes, building up his surfaces much in the albeit with the lurid colors and Pop-inflected to the aesthetic tastemakers, and his work is manner of a painter in acrylics or oils. flair unique to David’s work. all the stronger and more passionate for it. Indeed, his pastel painting “Solitude” calls This contemporary quality, resonant of to mind Edvard Munch for both its vibrant iconic media images, also comes across in ––Byron Coleman colors and the violence of David’s strokes in “The Watchman,” a lean and mean male

30 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 LiQin Tan: Uniting Nature and Technology to Uncover the Tao of Digital Life ne of the more fertile frontiers in natural wood shadow box. These imposing finally whitened with chalk and flattened Orecent art is the merger of modern torsos, created in a technique that Tan with pumice. In Tan’s case, too, the backs computer technology and ancient philoso- invented for this show, in which three- of the skins had to be sanded down for the phy as it occurs in the work of LiQin Tan, dimensional computer-generated animation digital printing and projection. an assistant professor of art at Rutgers and modeled images are printed on natural The laborious process seems more than University, New Jersey, who has garnered wood surfaces and shapes, have a presence justified by the resulting prints and projec- considerable critical acclaim for his “Digital akin to the darkly evocative figure drawings tions with their luminous surfaces, which are Primitive Art.” of the late Rico Lebrun. The process of mounted like primitive artifacts on strings Born in China, now residing in New mixing natural surfaces and new technolo- stretched tautly between beautifully finished Jersey, Tan has been exhibiting his work gies is carried even further in a work called natural tree limbs, lending them a striking widely throughout the world since the “Burl Nuts,” in which four burls frontally sculptural dimension. At the same time, 1970s, but his major breakthrough seems to arranged on a natural wood backing with LiQin Tan’s more traditional skills as drafts- have been his exhibition at Rutgers’ four flat video screens mounted above them, man and painter also come into play as a Stedman Art Gallery in 2004. For this was showing other facets of the same objects, prominent element of these works, seen in the show in which he unveiled the first providing a fascinating interplay of actuality the piece titled “Horse and Sun,” where installment of equine fig- his synthesis ures stylized of Taoism and in a manner digital 3-D resembling animation, an cave paint- innovation ings are that may yet limned in prove as brilliant red influential to and yellow future gener- hues, as well ations as the as in work of the “Digital pioneering Queen,” video artist where the Nam June piece de Paik. A sec- resistance is ond exhibi- “Burl + 4” a feminine tion followed at Philadelphia’s innovative figure in an Union 237 Gallery in December of 2004, and image. elaborate, apparently tribal, costume which and the third installment of Tan’s ongoing These works, inspired by the natural itself seems to incorporate the old and the project, “Burl + 4,” can be seen in another wood shapes of the burls that Tan selects for new in terms of being at once primitive- prestigious Philadelphia venue, the Da Vinci use, as well as by primitive sculpture, folk looking and neo-figurative. Art Alliance, 704 Catharine Street, from art, nature, and contemporary art, are the Perhaps the most sensational work in the February 5 through 27, with a reception most recent development of Tan’s work. exhibition is the installation piece called for the artist on Saturday, February 5, from However, the present show also includes “Digital Dancing,” in which the figure of a 6 to 9 PM. what he calls “digital parchment prints” and beautiful virtual woman, created by Tan on Although Tan, who has taught computer “digital parchment projections.” In the for- the computer is projected in three dimen- animation and graphics for over a decade mer, 3-D animation/modeling images are sions on an animal skin stretched on an alu- and employed state of the art technology for printed on a rawhide surface by a digital ink minum frame made to resemble a large tree even longer as an art director, and graphic jet printer, while in the latter 3-D animation limb. However, all of the pieces in the show designer, and animator, he places primary is projected on both sides of parchments function as a whole to unite the five funda- importance on the ancient underpinnings of simultaneously, the semi-transparent materi- mental elements of Chinese Taoist philoso- his work, as indicated by his statement, “I al providing a perfect surface for a variety of phy (metal, wind, earth, water, and fire), would suggest that any modern technology unique coloristic and animation effects, which serve as metaphors for the interrela- would be changed or replaced; however, the bringing the composition alive with light tionship of all things, with state of the art primitive systems of signification retain their and movement. computer technology in a seamless synthe- significance. As the ideologies and technolo- In creating these works, LiQin Tan was sis, at once poetic and profound. gies of society change, today’s state-of-the- obliged to overcome formidable technical Asserting that “Taoism is one of the most art technology will be tomorrow’s primitive challenges, particularly in the process of important philosophies of my personal life,” skills.” printing on different parchment qualities, LiQin Tan goes on to say, “As an artist, it is Indeed, although much of Tan’s recent thicknesses and hygroscopicity. While going essential to overcome the reasoning that work involves digital 3-D films and prints, as forward technologically, he was also obliged nature and technology oppose each other. well as multimedia installations, he has a to go back in time, approximating the ardu- Instead, technology undergoes an evolution thorough grounding in traditional Asian ous processes by which primitive peoples that is tied into its relation with nature. brush and ink painting as well as Western made vellum and parchment, starting with Ultimately the evolution of technology may figure painting. This background is especial- the skins of calves, deer, and goats, which lead digital media to become one of an ly evident in works such as “Burl Body,” had to be washed and stripped of hair or extension of our own natures; I call this the Tan’s powerful assemblage dominated by wool, then stretched on a frame to be Tao behind digital life.” four partial figures within a long, horizontal scraped free of further traces of flesh, and His point is well made. ––J. Sanders Eaton

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 February 2 - February 22, 2005 Reception: Thursday, February 3, 6-8pm

Rhonda Hall

James Jahrsdoerfer

Ethan William Mason Reflective Reality

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

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32 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 Brian D. Fox: A Compelling Marriage of Photography and Painting e have seen numerous permutations of Not to be underestimated is the quality of Wphotorealism, painterly photography, “touch” in Fox’s work; for all his use of and mixed media. Few artists, however, modern technology, his surfaces are ener- have so successfully merged painting and gized by an extraordinary expressiveness. By photography as Brian D. Fox, whose “pola- virtue of his painterly virtuosity, every inch paintings” were seen recently in the Chelsea of the composition is activated both textu- location of Agora Gallery, at 530 West 25th rally and chromatically in a manner that Street. lends a new vitality to photo-derived From 1968 to 1973, Fox studied at the imagery. Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Surface tension and heightened color add Technology with teachers trained at the excitement and mystery to Fox’s polapaint- Bauhaus with Mies van der Rohe, Walter ings, as seen in “The Affair,” which has all Gropius, and Maholy-Nagy, and that solid the drama of one of Cindy Sherman’s simu- grounding in craft and aesthetics is very lated film stills. Indeed, this compelling “Weekender” much evident in his work today. Equally close-up of an alluring woman wearing a one may be privy to some clandestine assig- important was the early experience of being black Lone Ranger mask, her red lips nation–– perhaps between the woman in tutored in oil and watercolor by his father, brightly glistening as she holds a silver “The Affair” and her lover! an art teacher who instilled in him the revolver, exemplifies the intriguing narrative In the same way, even though another respect for time-honored subject matter and element running through Fox’s work. For picture of three rubber rafts in a pool comes solid technique which is still a feature of his while each of his compositions functions across as considerably more abstract, it is work. autonomously as a discrete and memorable permeated by a similar suggestiveness, as Indeed, it is Fox’s traditional training, image, taken together they suggest a sub- though perhaps the participants in some sin- combined with his innovative use of pho- merged story-line. ister menage in another part of the same tography, that lends his work its unique In another work called “Weekender,” for local, the same story, have just stepped or qualities. His pictures partake of all the example, we see a red convertible parked in swum out of the picture space. imagistic possibilities of photography while what appears to be the sun-drenched court- In these and other polapaintings in his endowing them with tactile qualities that yard of a low-rent motel, perhaps in Philip recent exhibition, such as “Play,” “Cattle belong to painting alone. The synthesis Marlowe’s Los Angeles of rootless dreamers, Call,” and “Contemplation,” Brian D. Fox results in works possessed of a singular clari- schemers, and grifters. Thus, while the pic- creates works of art at once technically inno- ty and sensuality, in which the combination ture is compelling for its purely formal qual- vative and symbolically charged. of specific subject matter and shimmering ities, akin to those in a painting by Richard color creates an effect of hyper-realism bol- Diebenkorn, it also engages the imagination ––Maurice Taplinger stered by strong abstract design. like a scene out of film noir. One senses that Dixie Dudemaine Paints Panoramic Moments of Eternity he Long Island painter Dixie reflective surface of the lake that dominates oughly, that Dudemaine achieves a clarity TDudemaine is a consummate realist the three connected panels. and a vitality verging on the visionary, even whose work demonstrates that no mechani- Yet Dudemaine’s composition is consider- while apparently including no single thing cal instrument, not even the most state-of- ably more complex, encompassing not only not actually seen; which is to say: the cumu- the-art modern camera, can capture as effec- the lake but an intricate and highly detailed lative effect of the composition is simply so tively as the human eye the way we actually array of surrounding pedestrian walkways, dazzling that reality takes on the quality of a view the world. In her recent exhibition at lawns, architectural details of buildings such vision or a dream. Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, as the Riverside Technology Center, as well It is remarkable, too, that Dixie Dudemaine showed two triptychs on an as many minute figures strolling or going Dudemaine is able to sustain the same level epic scale, each depicting panoramic vistas about other disparate activities on the of visual intensity in another large triptych around Harvard University in such remark- perimeter. Each treelimb, window, lamp- called “Scene from Harvard,” in which the able detail and with such attention to sub- post, shadow and wisp of cloud in the clear composition is considerably less panoramic tleties of light that one was reminded once blue sky of the exhaustively detailed scene is and the figures play a more prominent role again how only an accomplished painter can lovingly limned. Yet the entire composition in the composition. Here, students are seen conjure up not only the outer appearance of coheres seamlessly and displays a freshness strolling near the gates to the Harvard cam- reality but also the intangible qualities that which never verges on the fussy. For more pus, with its red brick buildings and leafy lend a scene a vitality beyond mere optical like Eakins than Winslow Homer, or any trees. Flowers bloom brightly behind the verisimilitude. other nineteenth century American real- fence, and each cobblestone and shadow on Both Thomas Eakins and the contempo- ist––or contemporary realist such as the the street is clearly delineated, as is the rary realist Rackstraw Downes came most aforementioned Rackstraw Downes for that entrance to the nearby subway station. immediately to mind, as one stood before matter–– Dudemaine is an artist whose However, the piece de resistance in the the three mural-scale canvases that comprise compositions are systematically orchestrated composition is an area of sky where a thin Dudemaine’s magnificent triptych “October to take into account how each minuscule sliver of jet-stream appears to strike a belfry Blue.” One thinks particularly of Eakins’ element must add to the overall effect of the in one of the campus buildings. For it is this famous painting “Max Schmitt in a Single whole without presenting a jarring or single, exquisitely evoked detail that Dixie Scull” as a predecessor for the sparkling clar- disharmonious note. Dudemaine captures an instant in Eternity, ity that Dudemaine achieves in her depiction Indeed, it is through her ability to balance rendering it immutable for all time. of the tiny rowing teams, as well as the a host of details and meld them so thor- ––Wilson Wong

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 33 Some Notable Recent Exhibitions

Valerie Hird: Noho Fiber Cycles of Faith, Although Noho Gallery in Cycles of Fiction Chelsea, 530 West 25th Street, “Influenced by trips down the shows works in many media, the length of Spain and into the fact that seven leading fiber mountains of Morocco, and dis- artists are included in its roster turbed by the dissonance of fun- was sufficient reason to mount damentalist rhetoric everywhere an exhibition that was more including the U.S., I’ve tried in than justified by its excellence. my new work to explore reli- Marilyn Henrion’s hand gious and cultural ambiguities quilted pierced triptych com- found in our disparate cultures,” bined stately forms with bold Valerie Hird stated in the cata- colors and patterns, exemplify- log for her solo show, “Cycles of ing the Byzantine formalism Faith, Cycles of Fiction,” at that has won her wide recogni- Nohra Haime Gallery, 41 East tion. Jeanne Butler’s black and 57th Street. white fabric collages exploited Hird’s warm, earthy hues, Valerie Hird, Nohra Haime Gallery contrasts between drawn and evoking ancient, sunbaked walls stitched elements to create tac- suffused with buttery light, are The Anxious Image stretching its wings in a vision- tile trompe l’oeil effects in spare combined with luminous cadmi- at The Painting Center ary expressionist landscape; compositions that played off the um reds and gilded areas remi- Like The Drawing Center, its Westermann, a noirish watercol- graphic and the sewn. In Arlene niscent of those in Christian neighbor in Soho, The Painting or of a nude woman rising from Baker’s mixed media fabric con- icons, Medieval manuscripts, Center, located at 52 Greene the water near a funky nocturnal structions, bands of somber- and Persian miniatures. The Street, is one of those indispen- pier; Brown, a silhouetted figure hued silk, studded with the tiny classical organization of her sable institutions dedicated to overlaid with an enigmatic heads of straight pins, resulted compositions (wherein complex perpetuating the eternal verities hand-painted text: “He has in minimalist compositions of groupings of figures in contem- in contemporary art. According started out to that which has exquisite sobriety. Katherine D. porary dress may share the pic- to its director, Christina Chow, become a circle.” Crone’s bookworks featured ture space with mounted The Painting Center was born Bonnie Lucas, Charles photographic images from the knights in full armor dating in reaction to the bizarre Parness, Paul LaMantia, artist’s life and travels printed on back to the crusades; or person- absence of painting amid the Maryan, Olive Ayhens Martha gossamer fabric, layered in ages of diverse cultures and time glut of so-called “new media” in Diamond, Mark Jackson, graceful folded forms to approx- periods may congregate incon- the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Barbara Takenega, Jeff Way, and imate fleeting figments of phan- gruously in unexpected settings) Now in its eleventh year, this Stephen Westfall also conveyed a tom memory. Virginia Davis’ is especially striking in large oils non profit organization’s varied sense of angst that justified their small, square-ish, gridded geo- such as “Lysistrata Revisited” exhibitions have featured estab- inclusion in this show. Even metric compositions with and “A Last Supper.” The lished exponents of the art such more germane, however, each acrylic pigment embedded in women of opposing back- as Milton Resnick, Pat Passlof displayed a solid commitment to hand-woven linen canvas inte- grounds gathering near a battle- and Paul Resika, as well as the pure painterly values that grated a formal stance akin to ground to avert war in the for- emerging artists whose vitality The Painting Center consistent- Robert Ryman with haunting mer work, and the unlikely din- demonstrates that periodic ly supports. echoes of traditional women’s ers breaking bread in the latter rumors of the death of painting (with Leonardo’s rectangular could not be further from the windows given a more mosque- truth. like cursiveness), both bespeak a “The Anxious Image,” curat- wistful vision of human commu- ed by Jimmy Wright and David nity. Sharpe and made possible by In Hird’s exquisite small illu- anonymous funding and The minated drawings, however, the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason differences that still divide us are Foundation, featured several made manifest in militant painters known for their edgy quotes from sources as diverse aesthetic: Peter Saul, who to as the Likud Platform, the painting what Robert Crumb is Quran, Osama bin Laden, and to underground cartooning, was George W. Bush. represented with a grotesque In terms of technical finesse untitled portrait that turned and her ability to reinvest con- Picassoesque displacement of temporary realism with some of facial features on its head to the lost grandeur of past cen- whacky effect. Three leading turies, Valerie Hird can only be lights of Chicago Imagism, June compared to Balthus. However, Leaf, H.C. Westermann, and unlike that master of personal Roger Brown showed character- obsession, Hird’s artistic vision istically quirky works: Leaf, a encompasses global scope. mythic, anthropomorphic bird Bonnie Lucas, The Painting Center

34 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 gestural elements set against a publication once called “a new vibrant blue field. species of history painting.” Marianne Schnell, another Glass figures prominently in painter known for her lyrical Lisa Feldman’s mixed media brushwork and chromatic sensi- assemblages, as seen in “Glass tivity exhibited paintings in Book,” where a cast glass tome both acrylic and watercolor in with open pages suggesting which her forms, characteristi- wings about to take flight is set cally, suggested windblown atop a stack of real books, merg- leaves afloat against vibrant col- ing the ethereal with the materi- ored grounds. Schnell’s use of al. Here, as in other assemblages lines laid down with silver mark- featuring glass, fur, feathers, and er to lend her watercolors fur- various found objects, Feldman ther velocity was especially excels and making objects per- appealing. form as metaphors to evoke sur- Mark O’Grady employs a prising perceptual shifts and Marilyn Henrion, Noho Gallery whiplash black line on white visual sensations. handicrafts. For her works in on a new Raft of the Medusa, paper with the sure swiftness of Roy Gussow, a veteran sculp- handmade paper, Pat Feeney after wrecking the ship of state, a Zen ink painter. Only, tor who studied with Moholy- Murrell incorporated vegetal Stewart’s work is especially O’Grady also infuses his compo- Nagy and Archipenko and has material, twigs and even potting notable for his ability to imbue a sitions with wit and humanity by work in the collections of many soil in compositions notable for pristine technique with rare virtue of his skill in capturing major museums, including their rugged, sometimes ragged, expressive power. the sense of a figure and a sug- MoMA and the Whitney, has a fibrous forms afloat on solid-col- Although the gentrification gestion of character with a few unique ability to make minimal- ored grounds. rampant in Manhattan recently spare calligraphic stokes. ist form sensual. Especially Also including “feltworks” by forced Violet Baxter to relocate By contrast, Regina Stewart evocative in this regard is Erma Martin Yost, whose solo her studio to Long Island City, embeds ink and photo-imagery Gussow’s tall, totemic sculpture show is reviewed elsewhere in she was represented by the in acrylic on canvas to create in painted black walnut and this issue, this exhibition offered Union Square scenes that she compositions possessed of a lay- acrylic, “Forest.” an abbreviated overview of some painted from her studio window ered complexity suggesting vari- In two oils from his of the the more vital tendencies there for many years. Here, ous levels of time and space. As “Oculus” series, Frank Mann, in contemporary fiber art. Baxter’s bird’s eye-view of the though suspended in an emul- another artist included in impor- Broome Street Gallery: Union Square Green Market in sion of memory, Stewart’s tant museum collections, 15th Anniversary Exhibition watercolor demonstrated her images allude to an array of per- employs circular forms in organ- In September of 1990, The ability to suggest the specific sonal and public events, creating ic abstractions notable for their Broome Street Gallery opened through with a loose technique. what another writer for this gracefully flowing rhythms and at 498 Broome Street with an (Come to their luminous yet softly innaugeral exhibition called think of it, shaded colors. Mann’s “The Anatomy of a Violet Baxter visual language, while Commissioned Work: The Brain and Jack abstract, is invariably Painting” by Jack Stewart that Stewart appear allusive of the mysterious was hailed by critic Lucio Pozzi to succeed for cosmos within the human as “one of the most important exactly the body and psyche. works of symbolist-precisionist opposite rea- During a visit to Vienna, painting of our time.” In the sons!) where she was born, New decade and a half since, the Doris York artist Diana Kurz gallery, a project of New York Wyman was made a series of drawings Artist Equity, has presented the represented by to, as she puts it, “recapture work of Jacob Lawrence, Yasuo one large oil my relationship to the city.” Kuniyoshi, Philip Pavia, Louise that showed Especially affecting were Nevelson, and numerous other her gift for Kurz’s view from the win- distinguished artists. Its recent combining dow of her temporary stu- 15th Anniversary Exhibition, some of the dio, adjacent to where her included works by ten artists best aspects of father’s office had been associated with New York Artists color field before World II, and a Equity. painting and powerful composition com- Jack Stewart returned with abstract expres- prised of pencil, ink, and three mixed media paintings in sionism. pastel sketches of partially which the inclusion of concave Wyman’s eroded and leaning tomb- mirrors lent images of waves a painting lived stones, among other details glimmering vitality. In these rel- up to its poetic of a cemetery in Prague, atively spare compositions, no title, “Dancing arranged cinematically in a less than in the “The Brain Above the large grid. Painting” or his epic 2004 can- Sea,” with ––J. Sanders Eaton vas “State of the Union,” show- graceful linear ing Bush and his cronies afloat strokes soft Diana Kurz, Broome Street Gallery

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 35 “Craft Art Plus” Curated by: Enlightened Perspectives Elton Tucker February 25 - March 19, 2005 Reception: March 3, 6-8pm March 16 - April 3, 2005 Lauri Blank Betty Thornton Sara L. Krueger Vickie Fremont Liz McKay Elton Tucker Regina Miele Miguel Angel Tomasa Perez, et al.

Broadway Mall Community Center Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 [email protected] www.wsacny.org Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

Chromatic Abstraction RICHARD HICKAM February 2 - February 22, 2005 Reception: Thursday, February 3, 6-8pm BEYOND THE SURFACE

A series of vibrant, richly textured yet Hervé Souffi provocative and disturbing portraits, that inhabit the primordial netherworld. Jeannette Sura February 5 - March 26, 2005 Tera DeVenk CATALOGUE AVAILABLE Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Allan Stone Gallery Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 F. 212.987.1655 T. 212.987.4997 Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com Tues-Fri 10-6 Sat 10-5 Web allanstonegallery.com

Frank Perna . “Money Trails ll” Manifestations of Reality Oil paintings on wood February 2 - February 22, 2005

Rachel Bourgon Roberto C. Cardone Guy D‚Alessandro Ritch Gaiti Stockrave” 12" x 16" x 16" 12" Stockrave” “ Wood Oil on March 15 - April 2, 2005 Reception: Saturday March 19, 4 - 7pm Musical performance by vocalist Chantal Thompson Reception: Thursday, February 3, 6-8pm 530 West 25th St., 4th Fl, NYC, 10001 Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm 212 367 7063 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Sun. by appt. www.nohogallery.com Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 View additional work: http://www.perna.homestead.com/frankperna.html Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

36 GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 IRVING BARRETT ED BRODKIN COLLAGES “Mindscapes & Paintings”

Selected Works 1984-2005

“Warriors” 36" x 60"

Collapsed Synapse, 2004, Collage, 24" x 36" March 15 to April 2, 2005 Reception: Sat., March 19, 3 to 6pm FEBRUARY 22 - MAR 12, 2005 PLEIADES GALLERY 530 West 25th St., 4th Fl, NYC, 10001 530 West 25 St., 4th Fl., New York, NY 10001 • (646) 230-0056 Tues - Sat 11 - 6pm 212 367 7063 Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6 pm www.pleiadesgallery.com Studio: (201) 444-5399 • [email protected] www.NewYorkArtists.net/brodkin/ed . LiQin Tan Unbound “Burl + 4” February 25 - March 19, 2005 Digital Woodprints Incorporating 3D Animations

Renaud Buisson Gilberto M. Cardenas Robert Frederick Kauffmann Giorgia Pezzoli Aldo Zanetti

Reception: March 3, 6-8pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

Subscribe to “Digital Queen” February 5 - 27, 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO Reception: Saturday, February 5, 6-9pm see page 23 Da Vince Art Alliance 704 Catharine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147 Tel: 215 829 0466 Hours: Wed. 6-8pm, Sat.-Sun. 1-5pm

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO Metamorphosis and the Human Condition

FREDERICK HART DANIEL VICTOR Sculptures Paintings

March 5 thru April 3, 2005 CFM Gallery 112 Greene Street, SoHo, New York City 10012 Tel: (212) 966 3864 [email protected] Fax: (212) 226 1041 Sunday Noon to 6pm Monday thru Saturday 11am to 6pm www.cfmgallery.com GALLERY&STUDIO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2005