GALLERY&STUDIOAPRIL-MAY 2005 VOL. 7 NO. 4 New York

The World of the Working Artist

Why is Robert Goodnough still the most underrated painter in America? page 8 ARTISTIC FUSION April 26 - May 13, 2005 Reception: Thursday, April 28, 2005 6:30pm–8:00pm

Untitled 2005 acrylic on canvas 36" x Missy Lipsett April 5-23, 2005 plane painting PLEIADES GALLERY Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm (or by appointment) 530 W. 25th St., 4th floor New York, NY 10001 646.230.0056 www.pleiadesgallery.com

TOM O’HARA Bio Art: Recent Sculpture and Wall Reliefs “Gravity’s Yoke” Sculpture 39 x 20" 2004 Yoke” “Gravity’s May 1 - 31, 2005 Reception: Wednesday, May 4, 6 - 8pm EZAIR GALLERY 905 Madison Ave. between 72nd & 73rd Streets New York, NY 10021 “VENEZUELAN CENTER” 212 628-2224 www.ezairgallery.com Gallery Hours: 9:00am to 4:00pm Mon-Fri Tuesday - Friday 12 - 6 pm

GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 New Shoots April 27 - May 15 WAYNE THIEBAUD Opening Reception: Saturday, April 30, 2:30-5:30 SINCE 1962: A SURVEY Closing Reception: Sunday, May 15, 2:30-5:30 Artists: Carol Carpentieri • Carmiah Frank April 2 - May 27, 2005 Robert Helman • Jennifer Holst (curator) Irmgard Kuhn • Jean Prytyskacz Robin Glasser Sacknoff • Scott Weingarten Steve Weintraub • Deena Weintraub • Janice Wetzel

Allan Stone Gallery Broadway Mall Community Center 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 T. 212.987.4997 F. 212.987.1655 Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) Tues-Fri 10-6 Sat 10-5 Web allanstonegallery.com Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 [email protected] www.wsacny.org

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Highlights Susan Sills, pg. 4 Tom O’Hara, On the Cover: pg. 17 New York School, Second Generation: Nobody does it better than veteran painter Robert Goodnough, seen here in his upstate Jose F. Rios, pg. 7 studio. And he’s been doing it for over 50 years. So why isn’t his name on everybody’s lips, every critic’s Living Masters list? Could it be one of those inexplicable mysteries of human destiny? Photo by: Adam Reich

Cecily Firestein, pg. 5

Hope Carter, pg. 27 Bob Tomlinson, pg. 33

Deborah Lee Galesi, pg. 32

Irving Sandler N.Y. Notebook (Centerfold) George McNeil, Richard Hickam, pg. 35 Sally Ordile, pg. 15 pg. 6

GALLERY&STUDIO IMAGES An International Art Journal a fine art exhibit PUBLISHED BY © EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2005 All Styles and Mediums ALL RIGHTS RESERVED A Group Show by Several Members Co-Curators 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] Meyer Tannenbaum & Carole Barlowe May 25 - June 12, 2005 EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner Broadway Mall Community Center DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Juliet M. Ross Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 [email protected] www.wsacny.org

2 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Missy Lipsett Takes Her Painterly Explorations to a New Plane “ en artists understand better Indeed, as she hastens to Zthan any others the value insist at every opportunity, of empty spaces, and in a certain process is everything to sense what they left out was Lipsett, taking priority over more important than what they the finished art work as put in,” Alan Watts once wrote. “product,” for it is only “They lifted just a corner of the through the manipulation of veil to excite people to find out paint itself that she arrives at for themselves what lay behind.” her own particular truth vis a Although Missy Lipsett, far as vis the physical properties of one knows, does not claim to be paint as a vehicle for explor- a Buddhist, the same might be ing color and space, her two said of Lipsett’s new solo exhi- main concerns. Both are bition “Plane Painting,” at autonomous entities in her Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th paintings, free of conscious Street, from April 5 through 23, allusions to atmosphere or with receptions on Thursday, landscape (although it is the April 7, from 6 to 8 PM and habit of most of us to Saturday, April 9, from 4 to 6 Rorschach such references PM. into even the most abstract Lipsett is one of those rare “Untitled” painting, as evidenced by my painters who can get away with created by different methods of paint own insistence on finding making radical changes that would be application. Sometimes it appears that likenesses to Chinese mountains in her confusing in another artist and still retain paint of a relatively dry consistency has compositions). a sense of stylistic consistency. Not con- been dragged, or “scumbled,” over the For Lipsett, though, the chromatic tent to settle for the stagnant satisfaction tooth of the canvas in a manner that caus- adventure itself is sufficiently engaging, of a signature style, she insists on taking es the particles of pigment to disperse (a and space has an identity separable from risks. Each time she finishes a body of technique resembling “dry-brush” sans the objects and locations of the known work she becomes restless, she admits, the brush), resulting in grays with a world: It exists entirely within the rectan- and begins to wonder what comes next. grainy quality, in contrast to other, more gle of the canvas, to be surveyed, divided, Because she works intuitively, it would fluid grays that she creates by diluting her and apportioned by means of an intuitive seem that one’s own guess is as good as acrylic paints with water until they are as relation of the artist’s body to the picture her own. translucent as aquarelle. By mixing these plane. However––and this is especially Her new paintings are a far cry from two kinds of grays in a single composi- important in regard to Lipsett’s postmod- the “water works” that she showed in the tion, Lipsett achieves nuances that provide ern approach to spatial exploration––the wake of 9/11, with their liquescent forms the viewer with opportunities for exquisite two-dimensionality of the picture plane is as amorphous as anything that Helen tonal/tactile delectation, using her skills no longer as sacrosanct as it once was to Frankenthaler ever committed to canvas, as a colorist to invest monochromes with an earlier generation of abstract artists. although in their own way they are often a resonance recalling how the aforemen- Lipsett, along with others of her genera- just as spare and coloristically subtle. tioned Zen ink painters (who always tion, has arrived at the realization that Lipsett continues to eschew the use of worked monochromatically) managed to space, at this late date, can be implied as brushes and, since she prefers not to suggest an entire spectrum of hues. well as actual. One may explore the realm demystify her painting process, part of the Further pleasures are provided, howev- of illusion without falling prey to allusion, fun for the viewer is trying to guess exact- er, when Lipsett adds blue, yellow, green, and Lipsett’s latest paintings appear to be ly how she achieves her various mark- and red hues that she then paints over a consolidation and a synthesis of all her making effects. The new works are espe- with white, letting their half-hidden shim- earlier forays, in that she has honed and cially rich in texture and “touch”––albeit mer bleed through like pentimenti of integrated their entire arsenal of attributes subtly so. As the title suggests, Lipsett has light. Such palimpsests are especially lyri- into a harmonious and thoroughly satisfy- now introduced planar forms with a cal when combined with passages where ing whole. decidedly rectangular quality, although it she literally paints parts of her planar It is finally this harmoniousness, rather would be a misnomer to categorize her forms out altogether with white, creating than anything pseudo-exotic or nostalgic, new paintings as “geometric,” given how an optical effect akin to when “sun spots” that makes Missy Lipsett one of the few she veils these forms via the liberal use of appear to eat away the contours of an Western exceptions to Alan Watts’ asser- white overpainting, turning them into object one is gazing at out of doors, or tion regarding the art of Zen, even chromatic shadows and phantom shapes, when an element in a landscape is partially though she has obviously arrived at her so that “emptiness” continues to play an erased by thick fog. own aesthetic nirvana through the exam- important role in her compositions. Such effects are made even more dra- ple of Jackson Pollock rather than of In some paintings clusters of rectangu- matic by Lipsett’s use of luminous pale Kameda Bosai or Yosa Buson. From the lar shapes in various colors overlap in a yellow hues to flood her compositions beginning, Lipsett was too savvy a painter manner that calls to mind aspects of with light, although it never seems to be to succumb, as others have, to the lure of Cubism, as well as the rhythmically super- her intention to create natural effects. An Pollock’s style. She looked to him, how- imposed mountain ranges in traditional adamantly abstract painter, she does not ever, as a model of artistic freedom, and Chinese ink painting. The latter reference attempt to impersonate nature or even to has found her own way to lift the veil and seems particularly apt when Lipsett’s allude to it. Rather, such effects occur as a liberate painting from the dictatorship of planes are laid down with black acrylic, consequence of her constant “exploring,” drawing. with subtle variations in tone and texture as she calls her engagement with process. ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 Susan Sills and Her Band of Art Historical All-Stars

y this point in art history, I think we can Steinberg, however, Sills Ball agree that Susan Sills, fresh from has the ability to mix major retrospectives in Japan and at the and match styles Pensacola Museum of Art, in Florida, owns harmoniously, the art of the cutout. For while painted like- making their nesses cut from wood date back to the differences trompe l’oeil craze of the 17th century, signify when they were called “dummy boards,” individ- and Alex Katz’s freestanding portraits of his ual artworld friends were probably their first contemporary counterparts, Sills alone has made cutouts the main feature of her oeuvre for decades. Unlike those of Katz, which are slightly smaller than their models and not particularly real- istic, given his deadpan style, Sills’ figures are usually lifesize and often as eerily convincing as the effigies in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Then again, the degree of realism in Sills’ figures depends on whose style she is emulating, since most of her fig- ures (with the excep- tion of occasional por- traits of family or friends or the icono- graphic self-portrait seated on a stepladder that greets visitors to all of her exhibi- tions) are appropriated from art history. Being a virtuoso painter and a witty visual mimic, Sills has an uncanny ability to duplicate any Artist, Susan Sills with her Life Size Wood Cutouts from the Old Masters at Viridian Artists Inc., 530 W. 25th Old Master’s style Street from April 26 - May 14. 212 414-4040 www.viridianartists.com down to the most er portrait busts of Gauguin, Van Gogh, minute brushstroke. Suddenly encountering quirks of personality, as opposed to creating Madame Matisse, and several other luminar- one of her figures in a gallery or museum jarring visual discrepancies. Her painterly ies (in “Monsieur Magritte and evokes a shock of recognition similar to skills and sculptors’ sense of space imbue Mademoiselle De La Tour ,” the latter looks meeting a celebrity in the flesh. Indeed, visi- her hybrid art form with a compositional askance at the former as though wondering tors to Sills’ exhibition “The Cutting and narrative logic all their own. Thus her why that green apple is suspended in front Edge,” at Viridian Artists, Inc., 530 West three musicians seem as unified in their own of his face!). Also included are 2-D still life 25th Street, from April 26 through May 14, way as the interlocking figures in Picasso’s objects, such as a Van Gogh chair, a Klee may feel like they’re rubbing elbows at some famous Cubist work on the same theme. fish on a plate, and a Cezanne fruit bowl, A-list art historical cocktail party––especially And the sense that they share a livelihood, among other inanimate props in the ongo- if they attend the opening reception on as well, comes across in the actual open gui- ing drama of art history. Saturday, April 30, from 4 to 6 PM.) tar case, containing some change and crum- At once sophisticated and accessible, Sills’ The centerpiece of the show is a cen- pled bills, that Sills places on the floor near- pieces proved to be educational, as well, for turies-spanning musical trio, reminiscent of by. thousands of Florida school children who one of those “Supergroups” of the 1970s, The trio seems to provide musical back- were led daily through her recent exhibition with members culled from different rock ground for two waltzing figures (she with at the Pensacola Museum of Art, and later bands, comprised of a Bruegel bagpipe her red bonnet, he with his yellow straw assigned to create their own cutouts. That player (1523) , a Chagall fiddler (1935), hat) from Renoir’s “The Dance at her cutout based on an Ingres’ “Odalisque” and a Manet guitarist (1861). Even aside Bougival”; as well as a Sunday-in-the-Park- had to be draped with a real cloth, lest its from trying to imagine what such odd with-Georges soundtrack for the couple (he nudity offend the religious sensibility of that instrumentation would sound like (!), one with his top hat, she with her bustle) bible-belt community, only attests further to might think that such a combo would be strolling under a real umbrella, shedding the profound affect that the lifesize figures visually discordant, given the contrasts multicolored pointillist confetti onto the of Susan Sills, with their startling combina- between the three stylistic sources Sills juxta- gallery floor, in another piece called “Que tion of the actual and the illusory, have poses within a single tableaux. Sera, Seurat.” upon art audiences of all stripes. Like that other great artistic wit Saul Sills also brings us face to face with small- ––Ed McCormack 4 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Cecily Barth Firestein: Pushing Beyond the Paternal Tradition

ith back-to-back exhibitions at WPhoenix Gallery (210 11th Avenue, April 27 through May 21) and Adelphi University Manhattan Center Gallery (75 Varick Street, May 5 through August 10), Cecily Barth Firestein really seems to be hitting her stride. The exhibition at Adelphi is especially auspicious, since it will run long enough to give everyone a chance to catch up with an artist who is long overdue for far greater attention than she has received over a long and distinguished career, even while being greatly admired by fellow artists and included in many prestigious collec- tions. After all, Firestein first exhibited on Tenth Street back in the late fifties, when precious few women could hold their own in that boy’s club made up of boisterous male chauvinists with delusions of being the next Pollock or de Kooning. Firestein did more than hold her own, even though being considered “a real looker,” as they used to say, was another strike against her. For, more than one of the guys she regular- ly outshone in group shows must have asked himself how such an attractive and elegant woman could be such a gutsy painter, back in that pre-enlightened era, when such logic (or lack of it) was as ram- pant as paint-spattered overalls. Like many of the best artists of her gen- eration, Firestein studied with Hans Hofmann and obviously learned from that great teacher not only the rudiments of pic- torial structure and paint handling but how, as Hofmann famously put it, to “transform the material with which one works back into the sphere of the spirit.” Indeed, Firestein seems especially sensitive to the “Coming Out Or Going In” work on paper 61" x 52" spirit that already exists in the materials themselves, which may be why, unlike most on such a delicate balance of elements that poetic resonance that enriches rather than of her peers, she has always preferred paper one is tempted beyond all reason to invoke distracts from the purely visual attributes of to canvas, even while working on the large the hoary cliché of angels dancing on the her paintings. scale and with the gestural freedom that we head of a pin. Nowhere is this more obvious than in associate with Hofmann and The New York Come to think of it, even that would not the recent work on paper entitled “Coming School. be more farfetched than some of the witty Out or Going In?” Here, the tiny photo- In this regard, as well as in the innate and fanciful juxtapositions that Firestein graphic image of a nude woman is not only elegance of her sensibility, Firestein seems balances so successfully in her recent mixed a pinkly piquant compositional focal point, akin to the very best Asian artists, even media paintings, where processions of rab- but seems a pointed autobiographical sym- while being quintessentially Western in her bits, penguins, clowns, ballroom dancers, bol, as she walks with her back to us into a tendency to push beyond tradition into geishas, and other images that she calls roughly circular shape suspended within a areas of the unknown. In Firestein’s case, “clones” because of their repetitive nature field of dark, succulent strokes. Immediately the tradition she pushes beyond is that of move gingerly within variegated color fields below the feminine portal are two colorful Abstract Expressionism itself. However, further enlivened by characteristically ele- rectangles resembling minuscule paintings unlike Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan, gant bombardments of vigorous strokes discarded along the way, as well as a proces- fellow Hofmann students whose way of and artful drips. sion of six gray tags with dangling strings breaking the paternal yoke was by turning Since the formative stamp of the New that could be price-tags. One given to read- early to the figure, Firestein has gradually York School is indelible in Firestein’s work, ing specific meanings into abstract paint- evolved a way to bring about a détente one is immediately aware that the images in ings might see these tiny details as symbols between image and gesture, allusive collage her paintings are visual devices above all, of the price that a fiercely independent and pure painterly endeavor. She has done anchoring her compositions by adding artist like Cecily Barth Firestein must pay so not by mushing image and gesture more “pull” to the “push,” so to speak. in order to turn her back on worldly temp- together in the manner of her peers but by Yet, it is obvious that these pictorial ele- tation and stride with eyes wide open into presenting them as discrete yet harmoniz- ments are carefully chosen by the artist and the great unknown. ing entities in compositions which depend there is no denying that they also add a ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 George McNeil at Salander-O’Reilly Gallery here has always been Galleries. There was no Ttalk about “old art,” question, the artist was on a the work an artist pro- roll exhibiting and selling his duces in his/her late years. paintings despite the domi- But forget all that! George nance of post modernist art. McNeil, who died at the With this success, age of eighty-seven in McNeil’s art became ever 1995, was producing more outrageous with a paintings that were more series of paintings of Times audacious, outrageous and Square and Broadway in immensely energetic until 1987. The huge profile face the end of his life. In fact, in “Broadway,” shows a the older he got, the more smiling confident man who powerful his paintings dominates the Manhattan became. landscape as small toy-like Years ago, he said, buses, cars and buildings fill “There are three basic the background. McNeil was periods in a painter’s life. on top of the world. First studying and learning He had a gentle face with up to age thirty-five. Then bright blue eyes, but he consolidating until you’re could be fierce especially fifty-five. Mature work fol- during a debate. At an lows to sixty-five. But, Artists Talk on Art panel dis- there’s a fourth period, cussion at Landmark Gallery where you don’t give a “Herbatim” 1987 Courtesy of: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Soho, after hearing the damn!” other artists expound, he Particularly in the late paintings exhibited dancers, the night life, the hustlers. Exciting, suddenly stood up, obviously boiling over at Salandar-O’Reilly Galleries, February 8- terrifying, grotesque, funny, childlike; with anger as he raised his arm hitting the February 26, 2005, we see George McNeil Dubuffet, Art Brut, COBRA–it’s all there, trembling table with his fist loud and hard. in the fulness of his creative power. Colors painted in glaring colors right side up, Immediately the shocked audience became scream off the canvas; lines weave through upside down, along the edges; a macrocosm totally quiet listening to every work he said. shapes like a car racing on the thruway; of life, inwardly felt, outwardly observed, The young naked warrior in the painting, drips, blotches, spatters add to the mayhem put down on canvas by an artist who was “Resolution,” (1980) assumes a samurai of life; George McNeil’s life was about what unstoppable. position, legs akimbo arms raised, ready to he saw, felt, remembered and imagined. McNeil, born in New York City in 1908, fight. His body dominates the entire space In the large painting, “Herbatim,” studied at Pratt Institute, the Art Students of the canvas from edge to edge. Yet, in (1987), a disconnected tortured face like a League and later with Hans Hoffman in opposition to the aggressive figure are two child’s drawing in red with an open yellow Provincetown, becoming Hoffman’s assis- exotic birds, one perched on his lap, the mouth appears to be trapped by the chaos tant. Afterwards, he received a Masters and other flying beneath him; his guardians, his of life around him. Only an irregular rectan- Doctoral degree from Columbia University. other self? gle outlined in white contains the nightmare He was Director of the evening school at Contrast is one of McNeil’s significant image surrounded by a patchwork of shapes Pratt Institute where he taught painting and strengths both visually and symbolically. “In and colors with the riotous sensation of art history. Summers were spent with his Spite of All” (1984), a haunting, dreamlike Broadway on a Saturday night. wife and two children in Provincetown and picture, shows another aspect of the artist; Unlike the paintings of figures in the later Kerhonksen, N.Y. introspective, self-questioning. The confi- Seventies, McNeil uses a kind of shorthand He knew everyone: De Kooning, Gorky, dent warrior in “Resolution” is now depict- image making in the late work. In the Pollock, Kline, Krasner, Resika, Vicente, the ed as unsure with scary memories of the painting, “In The Palm of His Hand” whole New York crowd. But essentially, he past. His nude body turns away from the (1991) a huge lemon yellow profile of a was a man who preferred his own company viewer, his angry face is twisted around like woman with strips of green wool for her and painting more than hanging out with the head of a doll. Beside him are two grim hair, dominates the canvas. The torso is the Cedar Bar crowd. faced ghostly figures who act out a strange unimportant here, so McNeil eliminates it. Success came early with shows at the dance on the stage. But sitting below is a What he portrays is an unattached shapely Egan Gallery, Poindexter and Howard Wise comical cross-legged little fellow wearing leg with a high-heeled black sandal cradled Gallery. However, by 1967, new trends in harlequin pants who admonishes them. Is by a hand. Both surreal and sexy, McNeil art were taking over. In fact, the entire he the joker and they the fools ? adds tiny cars, airplanes and graffiti stick fig- Abstract Expressionistic school was super- Like McNeil, the little guy has seen it all: ures to the seductive vaudeville scene. seded by Pio, Op, Photo-Realism, Hard the joy, the sadness, the successes, the fail- Nothing escapes his roving eye in the car- Edge, Conceptualism and Minimalism, leav- ures; the ecstasy, the pain. While, “In Spite nival circus world that is New York. He ing McNeil with few sales and no gallery for of All,” reveals the artist in a moment of stores bits and pieces in his mind, seen many years. vulnerability, McNeil’s life was one of victo- through the window of a bus as it glides Slowly, in the mid Seventies, the dynamic ry. He was always true to himself regardless along Fifth Avenue with its mannequined emotional force and originality of his work of the times. As an outstanding Twentieth windows showing women in satin gowns. began to receive attention once again with Century Expressionist, George McNeil He passes through the cacophony of exhibitions at Landmark Gallery, Terry painted from the heart, his brush ever ready sparkling neon signs, or glimpses sexy young Dintinfass, Gruenbaum Gallery followed by to record and interpret the astonishing women gyrating on MTV; the disco Hirschl and Adler, Knoedler and ACA spectacle of life. ––Hedy O’Beil

6 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 A New Formal Power Enriches the Humanism of Jose F. Rios very ethnic neighborhood in a manner that is contagious. Ehas its own term for the Thus like every true visionary, elderly woman who functions Rios initiates us in new ways of as a benign busybody, spread- seeing. ing gossip, offering advice and Of course, it helps that Rios is keeping an eye on the kids on such an innately gifted painter. the block, seeing to it that they Although an autodidact, he has are safe and stay out of trouble. mastered his materials and tech- In Jewish neighborhoods, she nique to a degree that enables would be called a “yenta,” to him to realize the image that he the Irish she is a “biddy,” and sees in his mind’s-eye or in his to people of Hispanic back- memory vividly and make aesthet- ground she is known as an ic statements that are as sound in “abuelita.” formal terms as those of the most “Abuelita” is also the title sophisticated abstract painters. of one of the most tender and One of the most beautiful exam- affecting paintings in ples of this can be seen in his “Windows,” the third solo painting of a plant growing out of exhibition of Jose F. Rios, at a Cafe Bustelo can––itself a kind Gelabert Studios Gallery, 255 of icon, being the best-selling West 86th Street, from April 19 brand of coffee in every neighbor- through April 30, with a recep- hood bodega in the city–– on a tion for the artist on Saturday window sill. Here, in place of the April 23, from 5 to 8 PM. usual red or faded pink brick “The abuelitas that cared for generic to most tenements, Rios me when my mom wasn’t has made the building a brilliant around embody the idea that it shade of blue. Auras of indigo takes a community to raise a suffuse the entire composition, child,” Rios says of these blending with the green hanging “grandmothers of the barrio” plants surrounding the smaller whom he remembers fondly shoot in the Cafe Bustelo can, from his childhood in Spanish with its distinctive yellow and Harlem. Like other recent red design. paintings by Rios, this tribute Rio also calls upon his superb centers on a window in a tene- skills as a colorist and manipulator ment building, where the of pigment to capture the reflec- woman in the floral-patterned “Abuelita” tions on the window-glass and to house dress that is the universal uniform of tenement windows bear witness this miracle. evoke the mellow atmosphere her calling can be seen feeding the pigeons Such pictures symbolize the artist’s per- within the apartment. Through his use of flocking to her windowsill while keeping sonal journey from the hell of alcoholism soft yet luminous earth tones that create a one eye peeled on the street below. and heroin addiction during the decade that golden interior glow, Rios suggests all the For Rios, the fond mists of memory have he lived on the streets, to his present resur- homey, domestic comforts to which only a transformed this scene into a secular icon. rection as a sober and productive painter man who has lived on the streets and been The old woman has the serene smile and who has gained greater recognition among confined to the institutional coldness of bearing of a saint, and rather than wearing critics and collectors with each succeeding jail cells could possibly give such wistful their usual grimy gray homeless overcoats, exhibition. Rios, more than most of us, has expression. the street pigeons fluttering to her fingertips faced the most brutal depths of reality; yet Windows have always figured prominent- are as improbably white as doves. Graceful his vision has been purified rather than sul- ly in the paintings of Jose F. Rios, as a back- green vines dotted with delicate pink buds lied by his drug addiction and intermittent drop for his portrait of the great salsa musi- cling to the red brick tenement, encircling jail sentences–– a kind of miracle in itself. cian Tito Puente, as well as in other early the window, its stone molding encrusted He has emerged from his personal darkness depictions of the barrio and the inner city. with ornate swirls and cherubic ornamenta- bearing a vision that illuminates his canvases So it stands to reason that he would eventu- tion. Here, as in all of his paintings, Jose F. with a sincere humanism which is rare ally focus in more closely on these intimate Rios has given this subject a visionary reality indeed in the often dehumanized precincts symbols of family life in the city that he that transcends ordinary reality, a truth that of contemporary painting. grew up in from the age of two, after his is more poetic than factual. Obviously, there is a certain peril in paint- parents migrated from Puerto Rico. What No painter today depicts transcendence ing the way that Rios does, especially in a one might not have anticipated, however, is more powerfully than Rios, for whom every cultural climate such as our present one, so how Rios would exploit the geometric picture, regardless of its ostensible subject, is filled with irony and outright cynicism. Yet structures of these rectangular shapes to cre- a symbolic self-portrait. Perhaps his signa- Rios possesses an intuitive visual intelligence ate some of his strongest compositions to ture work in this regard is his now classic that never falters; his work never crosses the date. A passion for story-telling has always image “Hope,” in which a white flower is thin line that separates genuine sentiment been a salient feature of Rios’ humanistic seen growing through a crack in the side- from mawkish sentimentality. Which is to art. That has not diminished in the least, walk on a city street where the facade of an say, the feelings in his paintings are authen- even as he invests his newest paintings with all-night vegetable stand blazes beatifically tic, rather than feigned, and his absolute an unprecedented formal power. and only the equally bright eyes of many conviction impresses itself upon the viewer ––Ed McCormack

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 Why is Robert Goodnough Still the

t seems typical of Robert IGoodnough that he did not attend the opening reception of his most recent exhibition at Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, in the Fuller Building, at 41 East 57th Street. In the 1950s and 60s, when he exhibited reg- ularly at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, where he made his debut in the landmark exhi- bition “The New Generation” in 1950, Goodnough didn’t attend many of his own openings either. In fact, his reputation for social elusiveness was such that when he finally did show up for his eighth solo show at the de Nagy Gallery, in 1961, the writer B.H. Friedman noted, “This time he came to the opening, where he seemed to be the only stranger.” Along with Robert “Angular Lift,” 1985 Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers, the critic Irving Pauvre Artiste with a friend named Marta er in perhaps the most socially incestuous Sandler once cited Goodnough as one of Fabry about an impoverished artist mak- art scene in history was the erroneous the six or seven artists among the Second ing a sale to a rich collector in his studio perception that Goodnough may have Generation of the New York School that was, according to B.H. Friedman “as been something of a fence-sitter. “most included in exhibitions and publi- much a spoof of Kerouac’s Pull My Daisy “I’m not crazy about labels,” cations of the 1950s.” But when I asked as of Murger’s La Vie de Bohème. “ Goodnough once stated–– but the art Sandler recently why he thought But unlike Alfred Leslie, the painter world loves them. So what do you do Goodnough was not better known today, who made Pull My Daisy with photogra- with a guy who studied with and he seemed as puzzled as I was, saying, “I pher Robert Frank, Goodnough was not a acknowledged as influences both Amedee can’t really answer that question. I just regular participant in downtown happen- Ozenfant, a Purist from Paris and a stick- don’t know...” ings. Nor was he by any means a party ler for “discipline and precision,” and Sandler, by far the most reliable chron- animal. In contrast to many of his con- Hans Hofmann, the let-it-all-hang-out icler of the postwar period in the New temporaries, you won’t hear stories about guru of free-form “push and pull”? York art scene, also once stated that “the him flaunting multiple love affairs á la de Goodnough himself didn’t help them to Second Generation’s sense of family was Kooning or getting into drunken brawls figure it out when he was quoted saying even stronger than the first.” And if that ––or even loud arguments–– at the Cedar. things like, “I like to work freely, to slash is true, then Robert Goodnough would (“I had just come to New York and was with the brush and let loose. I also like to have to be considered the distant relation. new to all of this,” Goodnough, who was work carefully and with discipline.” After all, he’s virtually the only New York actually from a small town upstate but Not many academic critics and art his- artist of comparable stature who is obviously saw Manhattan as a place apart, torians were as perceptive as Barbara nowhere to be found in “The Artist’s told Matthew Rose in a 1987 interview in Guest, who, like her fellow New York World,” Fred W. McDarrah’s 1961 photo Arts magazine. And that was the gist of School poet Frank O’Hara, had an inti- book chronicling the movable feast that what this reserved provincial, fresh out of mate grasp of what New York School was the Manhattan avant garde, from loft the U.S. Army and skimping by on the painters were up to. Noting that parties to meetings of The Club; from G.I. Bill, had to say about the fabled Goodnough had been called “that the Cedar Bar, to communal dinners in watering hole of the New York School. Cubist,” by those who didn’t really Chinatown; to openings on Tenth Street Period.) understand his work, Guest wrote: “What and in uptown galleries and museums. His social reserve, however, seems that term implies is surprise, wonder that True, when he was still a student at hardly sufficient in itself to explain why, a painter brought up on the New York N.Y.U., Goodnough did help Barnet despite being in the collections of MoMA, scene which is a corridor stretching from Newman and Robert Motherwell organ- the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum the studio of Hans Hofmann to the Club, ize the well-known Subjects of the Artists of Art and just about every other museum whose walls were constructed and deco- lectures at Studio 35, and later participat- that matters, Robert Goodnough is still rated by the Action Painters, should so lit- ed in discussion groups with de Kooning, the most under-rated painter in America. tle appear to be one of the group. As if he Motherwell, and Pollock at The Club. He My own theory is that even more damag- had discovered within this corridor a sepa- also made a 8 millimeter film called Le ing than being dismissed as a party-poop- rate passage for his own private use.”

8 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Most Under-Rated Painter In America?

Goodnough’s work was that while it could be funky and gestural it didn’t look like warmed over Abstract Expressionism. Then again, even when the shapes were more controlled, disciplined and isolated (to use Goodnough’s own terms) the paintings didn’t look flat and pat like a lot of the hard-edged Pop and Minimalist stuff coming into vogue around that time. Goodnough’s paintings, which seemed to be everywhere, not only at de Nagy, but in numerous group shows in other venues, were often huge. They looked ambitious and even heroic in the way that one wanted New York School Painting to continue being––very much in what Harold Rosenberg referred to as “the tra- dition of the new.” At the same time, some of them also had a funky, almost humorous nonchalance, as though the painter had a wry eye on art history and could make vital and visually witty con- nections between Gericault’s wave-tossed raft, Rubens’ spirited steeds, and the sweeping gestural strokes that de Kooning and Kline laid down with broad house- painter’s brushes. As Fairfield Porter once “Cool and Warm Colors,” 1993 put it, “Goodnough is full of respect for Another problem may have been that when he weighed in with the influential tradition, which he uses for new formal while being embraced by Clement essay, “The American Action Painters.” ends.” Obviously, Goodnough’s paintings Greenberg (who included him in “New To make a long story short, in the popu- were very much in what Harold Talent,” the group exhibition that he larity contest between the two First Rosenberg referred to as “the tradition of organized with Meyer Shapiro for the Generation behemoths, Greenberg cham- the new.” Kootz Gallery in 1950) could work won- pioned Pollock, while Rosenberg pushed What seemed most new to Jeannie ders for strict formalists like Ken Noland de Kooning. Goodnough, who has com- and me when we first discovered and Jules Olitski, the early endorsement posed pictures with both “overlapping Goodnough’s work was its buoyancy, by the art world’s biggest polemical shapes” and “more isolated shapes” all which made Barbara Guest call him “an blowhard could only add to the confusion throughout his career, never did fit into innovator” for being the first painter to for a more complex and varied artist like the polarized scheme that caused the work outward from the center toward the Goodnough. Greenberg-Rosenberg wars. It was per- edges of the canvas, “in order to lift the “I originally met Clem Greenberg in fectly natural for him to move between weight from the bottom of the picture.” Provincetown when I was studying with Greenbergian Apolonianism and This weightless quality, further enhanced Hofmann,” Goodnough told the writer Rosenbergian Action Painting, and even by the grace and velocity of his forms, Matthew Rose. “He’s always gone to my to combine elements of both in one can- sometimes created the impression that shows and kept track of what I was doing. vas, confusing, and perhaps even offend- Goodnough’s huge canvases were on the When I had a studio on Christopher ing, those who would insist that every verge of taking off from the wall like fly- Street, down on Eighth Avenue, he came New York artist remain loyal to either one ing saucers! by one day with John Myers. I had just camp or the other. Goodnough married the romantic and finished a couple of paintings that were a * * * the prosaic with an aplomb that often little more disciplined and the shapes were That it did not respect arbitrary made us want to applaud, as one would a more isolated. They were not overlapping boundaries was exactly what made virtuoso musical performance. There was shapes like some of the other paintings. Goodnough’s work seem so fresh and so much going on in his paintings at Greenberg liked this one painting very appealing when my wife and I first discov- once, from flat, geometric areas of pure much––it was controlled. At one point he ered it in the mid 1960s. Jeannie and I color, to vigorous gestural thrusts, to called for a ‘large and bland Apollonian may have looked like stereotypical hippies graffiti-like passages of raw charcoal draw- art.’ And this painting kind of fit into his with our bellbottoms, love beads and long ing that got incorporated into the compo- scheme.” hair, but we much preferred making the sition ala Twombly, rather than covered Goodnough’s work overall, however, rounds of the galleries on 57th Street or over. Nobody else around at that time didn’t fit into anyone’s scheme, and this Madison Avenue, then the two hubs of seemed to be juggling so many disparate made it hard to place in a climate of con- the art world, to making the scene at methods of mark-making in such an eclec- tention between the critical camps of Fillmore East or Woodstock. We made a tic and yet coherent manner. Clement Greenberg and Harold point of seeing everything, and what Especially exciting was Goodnough’s Rosenberg, who became his arch rival struck us immediately about (cont’d.)

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 way of combining strong formal qualities with quirky hints of subject matter––par- ticularly in those compositions where angular, shard-like shapes and patches of color created semi-abstract suggestions of dinosaurs, figures on topsy turvy boats, and carnivalesque crowds. His work antic- ipated much that would come later, in the pluralist–– or postmodern–– era, from New Image painting to the variously allu- sive abstractions of artists like Terry Winters and Jean-Michel Basquiat. That Goodnough is not better known, even while his work is greatly admired by other painters and coveted by savvy col- lectors, can only be attributed to one of those inexplicable miscarriages of fortune or peculiar mysteries of the human per- sonality––and perhaps to his stubborn refusal to engage in art world politics or tailor his work to the expectations of myopic critics. “Abstract Development,” 1984 * * * hardened forms,/Grinning in a ditch, refined in the area of the emotions Goodnough arrived in Manhattan soon where they had fallen.” However, in through the act of painting.” after being discharged from the army at another section of the same poem––”As Perhaps sensing his sympathy to her the end of World War II. He had been the battle moved/in a great kaleidoscopic husband’s work, Pollock’s wife, Lee drafted in his hometown, Cortland, New pattern”––is even more telling regarding Krasner, invited Goodnough and the pho- York, a year after graduating from his visual orientation, reflecting as it does tographer, Hans Namath, to stay the Syracuse University, where he had gone the shimmering compositional dispersal night, rather than making the long trip on scholarship at the recommendation of that characterizes his best work. In fact, back to the city late in the day, after they a former high school art teacher. B.H. Friedman observes astutely in his finished the interview and photo session. Conservative as American art education essay that “Even in his poetry, Pollock, who was gregarious to a fault still was in the early 1940s he did not dis- Goodnough’s image is beginning to when drunk but depressive and with- cover modern painting until he was in the emerge: an image emanating from the drawn when sober, happened to be on the army, stationed in New Guinea, and saw tension between rigid form and emotional wagon at the time. the work of Picasso and Mondrian in a content...” “After dinner there was an evening to magazine. Soon Goodnough was supplementing get through,” the photographer would And not a moment too soon: “I was his meager income by writing reviews and later recall. “Pollock was pleasant but he tired of painting people that looked like articles for Art News, along with other didn’t talk much. He hardly said any- people, with eyes, nose and mouth in just New York School painters and poets like thing. Goodnough wasn’t a big talker the right places,” he told B. H. Friedman Elaine de Kooning, Fairfield Porter, John either, so things got a little boring.” in “Goodnough,” a monograph published Ashbery, and James Schueler, who offered * * * by Editions Georges Fall, Paris, in 1962. a lively alternative to dry, academic criti- Rumor has it that Robert Goodnough, “This looked like the time to make cism in the heyday of that publication. who now lives in upstate New York with some changes and free up a bit. It seemed “Far out on Long Island, in the tiny his Japanese wife, Miko, is still not much that in order to grasp the true energy of a village of Springs, with the ocean as back- of a talker. Well, one would have surmised person more was needed than to show ground and in close contact with open, that this most taciturn of artists would features, arms and legs. People moved tree-studded fields where cattle graze have grown even more so with time; most and did things; they didn’t just sit and peacefully, Jackson Pollock lives and people’s personalities tend to concretize pose; and what they did came from paints,” Goodnough begins his feature as they get older. Often, with artists, the underlying energies and drives.” article, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” in the work can ossify as well. Happily, this was While his degree in Art Education May 1951 issue of Art News, setting the not true in Goodnough’s case, Jeannie from N.Y.U. would eventually enable him scene in an atmospheric manner which and I discovered as soon as we walked to to teach at the Fieldston School, indicates that he could have made a career into the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery. Cornell University, as well as at his alma in journalism, had he so chosen. But That the show included both early and mater, he initially supported himself with when he gets down to the serious busi- recent paintings enabled one who had not odd carpentry jobs, and even, for a time, ness of describing Pollock’s working seen his work for awhile to reconnect with ran a newsstand with a struggling play- process, he starts thinking as a painter and what initially attracted one to it, as well as wright named George Franklin. reveals his true vocation. Indeed, to follow the continuity of his concerns. In 1947, while sharing a house on the Goodnough could as well be talking Goodnough has several different dock in Provincetown with two other about his own approach to abstract paint- modes of expression which appear to young painters, and attending Hans ing as Pollock’s when he writes: “The develop more or less simultaneously over Hofmann’s summer classes, he composed nature of the process is important. It is several decades, rather than occurring in some verses about his war experiences, not something that has lost contact with chronological “periods.” For example, the raw, strong stuff with lines such as reality, but might be called a synthesis of 1997 oil on linen “Horses II” in the show “Closely I saw the enemy, touched the countless contacts which have become at Perlow harks back to “Rearing

10 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Horses,” a 1959 painting inspired by a Goodnough’s oeuvre over Rubens copy of Leonardo’s “Battle of several decades, provoke a Anghiari,” which was not included in the visual sensation as exhilarat- exhibition. In both the earlier and later ing as watching a flock of paintings, the main emphasis is on captur- migrating birds sail across ing a dynamic sense of equine movement the sky. in purely abstract terms with long, rhyth- Recently, however, mical “action lines” that flow upward Goodnough has been work- from right to left over a vigorously ing most steadily on a group worked ground covered with variegated of paintings similar to ones color areas. that he did in the 1950s, Another characteristic approach to with more grounded con- which Goodnough returns from time to centrations of layered and time can be seen in “Angular Lift,”, at 68 interwoven strokes, often in X 104 inches, the largest canvas in the subdued monochromes exhibition, which while executed in 1985 interspersed with more stri- reminded us of some of his paintings from dent bursts of red, yellow, the mid 1960s. Here, rather than being and blue hues. Paintings integrated with the ground, shard-like such as the sizable oil and shapes (the term Goodnough prefers to acrylic on canvas “N-R-K- “forms”) in muted red, pink, blue, white, A,” 2004, with their vigor- green, and slate-gray tones appear in ous gestures and elegant angular configurations at the center of an drips, are akin to some of expansive field thinly stained with a pale, the works that Barbara neutral hue. Further enlivened by the Guest was referring to when drips that Goodnough does not like to she wrote, “Goodnough laid “NRKA,” 2004 cover “because it’s part of the process of down his color in short doing the work,” “Angular Lift” is one of brushstrokes, again employing the expres- American painters active from the postwar his large yet “weightless” paintings––even sive elements of cubism. But he certainly period to the present. Unlike many of his though it was created with overlapping did not construct his painting cubistically. contemporaries Goodnough has worked shapes. He was very far from that in his path quietly and steadily, with a minimum of In both “Color Shapes,1984,” and toward the edges of the canvas.” posturing. And while it might be said that “Reflection, 2002-2004,” on the other All of the paintings, early and recent, his avoidance of the limelight has worked hand, a multitude of tiny, roughly trian- in Robert Goodnough’s exhibition at against him, perhaps in that final assess- gular, isolated shapes soars over a lumi- Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery glowed ment he will benefit from having fabricat- nous, liquescent ground, resulting in even from the walls with an immediacy and a ed no public myth to get in the way of greater buoyancy. Such graceful forma- vitality that made clear once again how what matters most: the work itself. tions of small color particles on solid, yet long overdue Goodnough is for wider ––Ed McCormack subtly modulated fields, recurring in recognition as one of the most innovative

Jack Stewart, Ph.D., NA (1926–2005) We were saddened to learn that Jack Stewart, who proved that being an innovative artist and an old-fashioned gentleman are not mutually exclusive, passed away on March 4. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 27, 1926, Stewart began studying art at the High Museum of Art at age nine and apprenticed to the sculptor and painter Steffan Thomas while still in his teens. Later he earned a BFA degree at Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers and Willem de Kooning. He also studied architecture at Columbia University and earned MA and Ph.D degrees in art at New York University. Over the course of a prolific and varied career, which began with his first solo exhibition at the George Binet Gallery, in New York City, in 1950, Stewart became known as an easel painter and completed numerous prestigious commissions for mosaic and ceramic tile murals and stained glass windows. Among his better known projects were a 92 foot long mosaic on the facade of the Versailles Hotel, in Miami Beach Florida, ten mosaic murals on the SS Santa Paula, and a stained glass window for Robin International Corporation of New York City. Steward was a past president of The Artists Welfare Fund, New York Artists Equity Association, Inc. ; president emeritus of the National Society of Mural Painters; president of the Fine Arts Federation of New York and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. He had been chairman of the art departments of Cooper Union and Indiana State University, and provost and vice president of the Rhode Island School of Design. He published many articles on art and also wrote the definitive work Subway Graffiti, U.M.I, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1989, and Mass Transit Art, published by the Groninger Museum, Holland. His work is in the permanent collections of Yale University Art Gallery, The Museum of the City of New York, the National Academy Museum and many other important university and museum collections nationwide. He is survived by his wife, Regina Serniak Stewart, his son, Brendon Burns Stewart, his mother, Lil Stewart, and his brothers William and Travis Stewart. A memorial exhibition of Jack Stewart’s paintings will be held at the Broome Street Gallery, 498 Broome Street, from March 22 through April 3, with memorial services held in the gallery on Saturday, April 2nd and Sunday April 3rd. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to The Artists Welfare Fund, 498 Broome Street, New York, N.Y. 10013.

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 At CVB Space, “Secrets” Come Out into the Light n her catalog text for the group show “Secrets,” Ipresented by D’ARS International Exhibition Projects, of Milan and New York, at CVB Space, 407 West 13th Street, hot young Italian curator Stefania Carrozzini makes an important distinction between how the mass media increases ratings “by revealing secret stories, facts and circumstances which sometimes lend themselves to vulgarity” and the more creative secrets revealed by artists who Maria Teresa Mazzola Pierluigi De Lutti “open up the heart and the mind of man thus Giorgio Tonti bringing to light, revealing something which had suggests that there are never been done or thought before.” secrets we should The exhibition, which opens with a reception savor rather than from 6 to 8 PM on Thursday April 7 and runs regret. Filled with through May 7, features seven Italian artists and lush, pastoral colors one American, all united by enigmatic qualities that and buoyant brush illuminate the theme––or at very least suggest that strokes, De Lutti’s secrets harbor questions more often than answers. gestural painting The American artist Sonja Stoerr creates box Raffaella Corcione evokes a sensual assemblages which are the opposite of Joseph Maria Rebecca Ballestra Paradise where only a Cornell’s intimate shadowbox theaters for their hid- few dark blue shad- den, hermetically sealed quality. Vault-like edifices of ows lurk as a wood, concrete, metal and resin, contain mirrors reminders that bliss, and 35 millimeter transparencies, revealing mere too, can have conse- glimmers of the secrets within. quences. The relatively new medium of the digital print With an insouciant must be enjoying unusual popularity in Italy, since it elegance reminiscent is almost as prevalent as painting in this exhibition: of Robert In her digital photos printed on canvas Raffaella Valentina Cantoni Motherwell, in her Corcione practices concealment by a technique of Sonja Stoerr collage painting imagistic blurring that tantalizes the viewer. We con- “Hombre,” Valentina template the composition she calls “Secret,” in Cantoni conjures up a crude art brut figure by pasting a which a sensual pinkish form, surrounded by yellow fragment of a torn black shopping bag imprinted with auras, glows from a dark ground, wondering if it the Spanish word for “man” to a gestural landscape of truly is a corpulent nude woman floating like an earthy tempera colors. The knots and loop of the bag’s astronaut in space or something entirely different. white string handle form a “Smiley Face,” and also seem Not knowing for certain makes our voyeurism an to suggest that secrets are something we pick up and even more guilty pleasure. carry with us wherever we go. Giorgio Tonti, on the The digital print is employed with contrasting Geppo Monzio Compagnoni other hand, employs a similarly looping form in an unti- clarity by Maria Rebecca Ballestra in “Capture tled work in mixed media on wood. However, suspend- What’s Inside,” where three photographic images of the same ed from a steely blue horizontal bar set against a rusty red expanse young woman are arranged like police mug-shots on a brilliant yel- of agitated brush strokes, Tonti’s loop suggests a hangman’s noose, low background with the title below them in red block letters. In raising questions about the more self-destructive aspects of the one picture she gives the thumbs-up sign; in the second she shows secrets that we keep. ––Ed McCormack us her profile in willing parody of the pose a convicted felon is forced to assume; in the third, she sticks out her tongue. Perhaps with her Neo-Pop approach Ballestra is telling us that the best way to diffuse our secrets is to advertise them as blatantly as one would The Uncommon Vision any marketable commodity. Then there is Maria Teresa Mazzola, who touches upon how May 5 – May 25, 2005 some secrets can be hidden by cosmetics in a digital photo printed Reception: May 5, 2005, 6-8pm on aluminum entitled “Make Up.” Mazzola, however, employs an image of a mirrored compact and a make-up brush to create a com- position that is primarily abstract by virtue of its heightened colors Steven J. Backman and the formal arrangement of the barely recognizable cosmetic items. M. Del Pilar Geppo Monzio Compagnoni, on the other hand, evokes the Marie Helene Gire more serenely blameless secrets lodged in the realm of dreams in an acrylic painting on an oval canvas called “Portrait.” In Tarik Hardaga Compagnoni’s lyrically surreal picture, permeated by nocturnal blue hues, a young woman slumbers within a bottle that has been trans- Maria Elizabeth Robles formed into a ship by a paintbrush projecting from its top like a mast, with a brightly-checkered garment serving as a sail. But don’t Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12-6pm worry: should the sail fail, there’s always that smoking cigarette 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea NY, NY 10001 sticking out of its cork to propel this dreamboat like a steamship! Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Three other painters take a more abstract approach to the theme: Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com In an oil on canvas called “The Secret Garden,” Pierluigi De Lutti 12 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Vernita Nemec Unwinds Her “Endless Junkmail Scroll” unkmail and the Art from Detritus Movement is a match Jmade in heaven, and who better to consummate it than Vernita Nemec, AKA N’ Cognita, the founder of the movement herself? Nemec, who has been active in the art world since the late 1960s as an artist, performance artist, and independent curator, has been working for the past year on “The Endless Junkmail Scroll,” a spectacular collage installation that will be on view at Gallery Onetwentyeight, 128 Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side, from April 20 through May 14. (With the scroll serv- ing as a stage-set Nemec will perform the first public act of her 7 Years of Living Art Project in collaboration with artist Kazuko Miyamoto and musician Sean Carolan on Thursday and Friday, May 12th and 13th, at 8 PM. ) Since Nemec sees the scroll as representing the endless onslaught of junkmail, reflecting information overload and 21st century complexity, she has conceived it as an ongoing project. “As a response to our market-driven world,” as she puts it, she will make fragments of the work available to collectors (who will be able to select sections of it by the linear inch), and after their removal, the scroll will be “closed, re-collaged and re-connected, keeping the work in constant transition.” Recently, invited guests had an opportunity to preview the scroll, which is now over 100 feet long, in a private showing at Viridian Gallery in Chelsea. With the patterned linings of blue and green security envelopes serving as connective tissue for a crazy quilt of varied imagery created with drawings, fragments of text, photographs, painted passages, and all manner of collage elements, the scroll seemed to take off like one of those caterpil- lar rides in a carnival, twisting this way and that, climbing walls and turning corners, gaining visual velocity as it wended its end- Vernita Nemec with her installation. less way around the gallery. Nemec, a recipient of grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Franklin Furnace, and the Field, has done a lot of things in her eclectic career: exhibited and performed in the United States, Mexico, Hungary and Japan; participated in seminal fem- inist and political and protest art happenings; interviewed numerous art world luminaries for the Artists Talk On Art series of panel discussions (of which she served as Director in the 1990s); curated exhibitions at the Henry Street Settlement; par- ticipated in seminal feminist and political events; organized Art from Detritus group shows around the country, and engaged in any number of other projects and activities that have gained her a reputation among fellow artists and others in the know as one of the more vital personalities in the contemporary scene. However, “The Endless Junkmail Scroll,” with its intricate array of symbolic, diaristic, autobiographical, and spontaneous elements, is a defining, career-crowning achievement for Vernita Nemec. Encapsulating the philosophy of aesthetic ecology that prompted her to found the Art From Detritus movement, along with numerous other career-spanning concerns, in an innovative ongoing conceptual format, it is a major statement which seems slated to extend this artist’s influence far beyond the under- ground where it has for too long languished as one of the bet- ter-kept secrets of the avant garde. Which is to say: Vernita Nemec is a populist artist in the very best sense of that term, so it’s about time she was a lot more popular. ––Ed McCormack

(Note: The Next Art from Detritus Group exhibition will open on April 14th and run through May 22 at the Synagogue for the Arts in Tribecca; call 212-674-0244 or 212-414-4040 for information; and Vernita Nemec will moderate a related Artists Talk On Art panel discussion called “Art from Detritus––10 Years On” with several participating artists at The School of Visual Arts, 209 E 23rd Street, at 7 PM on Friday April 29.)

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 “Arts Ventures” at the Venezuela Gallery: A Vital Survey of Women Artists in Midtown ounded in 1897, the National League tutu with green and gold metallic trim. trial forms that inspired her nineteenth Fof American Pen Women is one of our Sculptors made a particularly strong century predecessors. more a venerable arts organizations. Its showing in this exhibition, with work Larissa Tormakov combined abstrac- membership encompasses both traditional ranging from Grace Chin’s intricate paint- tion with elements of figuration in her and avant garde tendencies, with the only ed terra cotta bas relief of a young woman painting of an artist and model merging criteria seemingly being a high level of followed along a country by a flock of as one, a tour de force of strident color skill and professionalism. Several members ducks; to Rose Stigliano Craney’s ambi- with an almost sinister psychological and guests participated in “Arts tious, large scale abstract pieces combin- impact. Another artist known for merging Ventures,” a memorable recent group ing blue neon with aluminum, which cre- the abstract and the figurative, Elvira exhibition at the Venezuela Gallery, at the ate a compelling harmony between physi- Dimitrij showed a group of paintings in Venezuelan Center, 7 East 51st Street. cal and ethereal elements; to Tatiana which fragmented images of glamorous One honored guest was the Venezuelan Mamaeva’s plaster figure with the face of women’s faces, particularly big red lips, painter Oly Dias, whose abstract canvases a grown woman and the body of a baby, are combined with fragments of type, are all about color and gesture, with bold, poignantly commenting on the perception clouds, and Ben-Day dots á la buoyant forms that create dynamic of women in certain segments of society; Lichtenstein, in compositions suggesting compositional rhythms yet resonate with a to Saskia Sutherland’s merger of poetic “anti-ads” for cigarettes and beauty prod- kind of casual charm. Dias’ obvious joy in imagery and geometric form in her small ucts. All about addictions fostered by the act of painting is contagious, enabling yet powerful mixed media stone sculpture mass media, Dimitrij’s bold emblematic the viewer to participate vicariously in the “Imaginary Flowers Outside My canvases can only be termed “Pop process of laying down bold strokes, Window.” Surrealism.” Then there was Marcia dots, and dashes of color in a vibrant Among the painters, Sonia Grinaeva Ostwind, whose bold floral compositions visual dance. Her work displays the demonstrated the enduring qualities of in acrylics combine vibrant colors and spontaneity and simplicity, like that of plein air in her large canvas “Washington expressionist brushwork to convey the Miro at his best, that only comes with Square Park,” evoking brownstones rich beauty and energy of organic forms. mature mastery. glimpsed through flowering trees, a Ostwind’s flower paintings are like loving Equally exciting in a more precise, woman pushing a pram among strolling portraits, in that each petal and leaf pulses hard-edged manner was a painting by pedestrians, and other details in a plethora with the vital energy of a living spirit. veteran artist Emily Mehling in which of breezy Neo-Impressionistic strokes. Various postmodern approaches to aspects of feminine anatomy were freely Grinaeva’s mastery of flickering light and abstraction were also in evidence, ranging abstracted in color areas that resembled shadow invested the scene with the feel- from Christine Nelson’s collage graphics stained glass. Mehling has the rare ability ing of a blustery day in early Spring. Then of neon signs and logos juxtaposed and to animate geometric forms within bold there was Jeanette Martone, who imbued jumbled to create a semiotic Times black outlines in a manner that invests photorealism, a generally “cool” style, Square of warring texts; to Arlene Palitz’s them with a striking expressiveness that with affecting emotional content in her acrylic paintings with their saturated col- one does not often encounter in this exacting yet subtly expressive painting of ors and densely layered surfaces; to Laura mode of painting. three children in a tropical climate taking Schiavina’s small collages in which grace- Frequently exhibited New York painter shelter beneath a tree. Also laden with fully flaring forms emerge from dark Rebecca Cooperman also made a strong psychological impact, the paintings of grounds, enlivened by luminous bursts of contribution with her canvases in which Adrienne Goldberg employ an impassive color, gestural strokes, and drips. floral forms painted in naturalistic colors style ala Alex Katz to convey underlying Also including other fine works by create lyrical rhythmic patterns. Although tensions, as seen in her image of three Eleanor Capogrosso, Phylis Flower, Sheya the abstract qualities of Cooperman’s pic- black-shawled Arab women cradling Lederman, and Arlene Egelberg that tures are most often remarked upon, here infants in their arms at a border crossing space constraints prevent doing justice to we also became aware of her ability to in the desert. here, “Arts Ventures” was a recent high- evoke an emotional subtext with plant Mirel Bercovici, on the other hand, light in a relatively new venue, under the forms that suggest reaching hands and celebrates the joy of life in “Field auspices of The Consulate of the seem to signify a sense of longing. While Flowers,” her painting of Gypsies dancing Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which such interpretations are admittedly subjec- on a grassy hillside, their abandoned ges- has considerably enriched the cultural life tive, Cooperman’s deceptively simple sub- tures mirrored in the rhythmic movement of the city by presenting exhibitions of jects possess a quiet depth and richness of the clouds above. Bercovici, who had a consistently high quality. that rewards prolonged contemplation. major retrospective at Westbeth Gallery ––J. Sanders Eaton Claire Clark’s glazed stoneware figure awhile back, has been exhibiting for many tableaux, with people gathered around years and her paintings invariably convey a tables covered with miniature bowls and sense of optimism and energy. Energetic THE BROOME other utensils evoke a sense of human in another manner, Miriam Wills’ vigor- community, enhanced by their earthy ous large collage paintings feature appro- STREET materials, while her sculpture of a single priated photographic images of flowers statuesque figure suggests a woman with a and fruits swirling within rhythmic GALLERY lot of Attitude. By contrast Estelle Levy abstract compositions reminiscent of showed a witty postmodern take on Futurism. However, Wills’s palette, domi- Ground floor, 1,300 sq. ft. Degas’ famous sculpture of a ballerina. nated by visceral red hues, is more evoca- Exhibition space rental available However, In Levy’s piece (entitled tive of musculature and other aspects of “Move of Degas”), the dancer was an the human body and the organic world in 498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 anthropomorphic tree-limb wearing a general than of the mechanical and indus- Tel: (212) 941-0130

14 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Sally Ordile: Probing a Dark and Terrible Beauty

eminist art did not begin in the late by presenting psychological and emotion- the gallery. Fsixties and early seventies, although al content that works in concert with their For Ordile is, in fact, dealing with that was the period when the first overtly estimable formal attributes. Although her almost unbearable states of being, explor- political works by women artists exploded work, like that of Smith and Hesse, ing what she refers to as “inner distresses into mass consciousness in a movement appears process-driven, Ordile puts pri- that culminate in avoidance,” as well as spearheaded by Judy Chicago, Miriam mary emphasis on the conceptual and “patterns of defeat that offer no settle- Schapiro, and other now well known fig- intellectual gestation of her pieces. ment,” which she expresses with inter- ures who addressed critical issues of injus- “I must say that for me the primary twined forms that actually allude to the tice. In fact, the feminist sensibility was pleasure of this ‘art thing’ is the thinking tortured convolutions of our most trou- present decades earlier, before there was journey that goes on before the actual bling thoughts. Yet by virtue of her abili- a feminist movement as such, in the work hands-on work begins,” Ordile stated ty to invest even the most somber subject of Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Nevelson, recently. “The exploration of surround- matter with aesthetic values that impart a Louise Bourgeois, and many others less ings, the process of learning and the “terrible beauty,” to borrow Yeats’ exqui- prominent but no less relevant. problem solving, is the true joy. The site phrase, Ordile’s work suggests at least And women’s issues the possibility of transcen- continue to be addressed dence and, ultimately, in a no less urgent man- grace. ner today in the work of Like the early canvas contemporary artists such constructions of Lee as Sally Ordile, whose Bontecou, with their solo exhibition, featuring impassive yet tactile sur- works from a series she faces, Ordile’s mixed calls “Threads: Conflict media assemblages have a & Resolution,” can be rugged materiality that seen at 2/20 Gallery, affects the viewer on a 220 West 16th Street, level that goes beyond the from April 12 through merely visual to strike a 26. (There will be a visceral chord. Indeed, reception for the artist on their intricately interwoven Thursday, April 14, from forms, imprisoned within 6 to 8 PM.) and bulging against cell- Ordile, who lives and like compartments within works in Florida, is well black box constructions, known for her dynamic can actually suggest viscera use of organic materials Threads” series No. 23, 2001 and thus provoke a gut- such as rope, thread, and grabbing sense of identifi- even the large palm fronds ubiquitous to forms that are produced are an extra- cation and empathy in the viewer. The her home state, in her mixed media pieces bonus––sometimes lots of fun, sometimes tensions that they provoke are almost as and installations. In an earlier exhibition terrifically frustrating. A way of speaking. palpable as the physicality of the pieces called “14 Stations,” which caused a con- Another kind of voice.” themselves, in works such as “Threads siderable sensation in the press, Ordile In the works from her “Threads: No. 40,” where dark, textured, relief-like created a large installation in which palm Conflict & Resolution,” featured in the forms created with insulation and inter- fronds that had been cleaned and treated new exhibition at 2/20 Gallery knotted spersed with dowels suggest ashen foliage with black gesso were mounted on the forms are prominent, often within rectan- in some emotional netherworld every bit walls and dangled from the ceiling, creat- gular formats. In these works the domi- as harrowing as the burnt funk assem- ing an overall environment. The fronds nant color is black––a deep, opaque dark- blages of Bruce Connor. By contrast, in were combined with black lace from ness created with black gesso, to be more “Threads No. 23,” where a thick cluster women’s lingerie and barbed wire to cre- exact–– which Ordile employs as power- of metal strapping tied and suspended ate powerful juxtapositions that spoke vol- fully as the aforementioned Louise from a thick, rough rope writhes like 3-D umes about relations between the sexes. Nevelson, to alternately express what she Abstract Expressionist calligraphy, and Their effect was such that one critic was calls “a deep claustrophobic space that “Threads No. 24,” where a heaping moved to liken the installation to Marcel allows no penetration of light” or the mound of twine and rope is symbolically Duchamp’s great work “The Bride womb-like space of “a soft velvety canyon combined with a string of rosary beads, Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even where one is safe from conflict.” The all- Ordile’s forms seem no less tormented for (The Large Glass).” enveloping darkness of these pieces is as having escaped from the confines of her Sally Ordile has also been compared compelling in its own manner as some of black boxes. favorably to celebrated contemporaries the more somber works of Mark Rothko, Sally Ordile, also known for her seri- such as Kiki Smith and the late Eva Hesse, and possessed of a similar spiritual sugges- graphs, is a daringly uncompromising and such comparisons are entirely accu- tiveness. Ordile attributes this to the par- artist. Her work is strong stuff and makes rate, for Ordile has her own way of trans- ticular qualities of black gesso itself; but no attempt to ingratiate itself at the forming materials to make highly original this, of course, does not take into account expense of what she has to tell us. Yet and often startling statements about the intangible poetry that the artist man- those who value content over decorative- women traversing “the pathway of humili- ages to impart to her materials. And it is ness will find her exhibition both moving ation and self-sacrifice.” Aggressive and this sense of mystery that lends the and richly rewarding. expressive in equal measure, her pieces “Threads” series much of its haunting ––J. Sanders Eaton command attention and provoke thought presence and permeates the atmosphere of

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 A Temporary Sculpture Park Springs Up in Bridgeport n galleries, sculpture is all too often Goldberg invention: perhaps a flying Itreated as art’s stepchild––or, as one hat stand with an umbrella-like pro- famous critic infamously put it, peller! “Something you back into while look- By contrast, Herb Rosenberg com- ing at paintings.” Out of doors, how- ments trenchantly on our present ever, sculpture truly comes into its political miasma with “Black Cloud own, interacting with nature and Over America,” another towering architecture, making itself at home in piece in which a dark shape that does the world in a way that painting rarely indeed resemble a cloud is supported can. by tall steel stilts. To Rosenberg’s One especially good example of this credit, however, the sculpture tran- interaction between art and environ- scends the obvious by virtue of its for- Lila Ryan ment is a current outdoor show by ten mal power. Robert Dell members of the New York-based Lila Ryan’s “Windows on the group “14 Sculptors” at McLevy Park, World” is admirable in another way, State Street, Bridgeport, CT. since it is an homage to the Twin (Sponsored by the Parks Department, Towers which addresses that lingering Mayor John Fabrizi, and the ache in our mass consciousness with- Rockaway Arts Alliance, Inc., the out becoming mawkish. Rather, Ryan installation continues through July employs bright colors and symbolic 2005.) imagery within totemic forms to cele- McLevy Park is a verdant preserve brate the human spirit. amid the brick and asphalt of a former Siena Porta projects a more per- industrial district. Robert Dell’s boxy sonal sense of spiritual transcendence welded steel sculpture “Crossfeed” with a figure in the lotus position cut Allan Cyprys alludes to the city’s history with kinet- into sheet metal and suspended from a Siena Porta ic components that rattle in the wind, large steel frame. The center of the sil- evoking ghosts of long-gone milling houetted figure opens like a window machinery. Allan Cyprys, on the other on the park’s green lawns, suggesting hand, simultaneously suggests archi- a sense of oneness with nature tectural structures and severely achieved through the artist’s practice abstracted human figure with geomet- of Zen Buddhism. ric forms that achieve a striking syn- In “Blue Landscape,” Ursula Clark thesis of the geometric and the expres- juxtaposes sycamore branches wrapped sive. Thus Cyprys’ wood sculpture in blue yarn with blue spheres to sug- “Humanscapes” is simultaneously gest trees and boulders in a formal gar- poignant and stately. den. Influenced by Native American Supposedly, Richard Brachman’s and other indigenous art, Clark’s Esther Grillo “Stairway” was conceived as a means sculpture conveys the civilized respect Richard Brachman of access to the elevated railroad corri- for nature that characterized so-called dor in Chelsea, an anticipated site for “primitive” cultures yet seems to be public art. However, Brachman’s rapidly vanishing in our own. maze-like configuration of massive Then there is Donald Kapela’s crisscrossed beams is more like an sculpture “Stand of Trees,” which seg- obstacle course than a stairway, facing ments the idea of landscape dramati- the viewer with a formidable concep- cally, with topographical terrains and tual challenge and inspiring Walter topiary shapes emerging from the sur- Mitty-like imaginative leaps. face of squared-off columns that sug- “Psychedelic Mushroom,” a kinetic gest vertical sections of terra firma steel sculpture by Esther Grillo, is a torn whole from the earth’s core. Herb Rosenberg fanciful ten foot red tower topped by Such thought-provoking takes on Ursula Clark an elaborate circular cap that revolves the natural world seem especially per- in the wind. Twirling against the sky- tinent in a public park, where we often line, it calls to mind the carnival rides take the tiny portion of nature still rather than industrial drudgery––or at allotted us for granted. However, an very least, weekend escapes from the exhibition such as “14 Sculptors at workaday world. McLevy Park” is even more valuable Estelle Levy adds to the carniva- for taking art out of the rarefied realm lesque feeling with a mixed media of the gallery and museum and sculpture called “From Diversity to demonstrating how engaging it can be Harmony.” Incorporating the arm of a in the public arena–– something that chair, a hubcap, lengths of pipe, used advanced, aggressive, contemporary shower heads and other found objects, sculpture of the type seen here is espe- Levy demonstrates that her heart cially well suited to do. belongs to Dada with a whimsical Estelle Levy Donald Kapela assemblage that suggests a Rube ––J. Sanders Eaton

16 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 The Sculptures of Tom O’Hara Exemplify the Ethos of “Vitalism” ne of the major innovations of modern beasts, both actual and mythic, Oand postmodern sculpture has been the while others could be jungle use of unconventional materials and mixed plants, perhaps of some media to bring about a more organic syn- exotic, possibly even carnivo- thesis of art and nature. Increasingly, the rous, variety. attitude known as “vitalism,” which recog- The sense of biology run nizes the metaphysical element in nature amok permeates O’Hara’s oeu- and accepts the impossibility of ever com- vre, inspiring one to read all pletely comprehending living structures, has manner of possible imagery come to triumph over the more mechanistic and meanings into some of his modes of expression that prevailed in the fabulous shapes. Both his early nineteenth century. For in the inter- sculptures and wall reliefs creat- vening decades, we have arrived at the real- ed with paper mounted on ization that even Futurism was a romantic canvas, are powerful, paradoxi- movement, in that it glorified the machine cal works, as accomplished in to an equally metaphysical degree, yet with- formal terms as they are poeti- out providing the mystery and poetic reso- cally suggestive. With their tac- nance that attends the unknown, and have tile surfaces, rich colorations, therefore come full circle back to nature as a and a gestural velocity that at driving force in artistic creation. times renders any distinction No contemporary sculptor embodies this between sculpture and painting new attitude more auspiciously than Tom moot, O’Hara’s pieces possess O’Hara, whose work also demonstrates the an often startling immediacy. advantages of an art that finds its footing far Among his most overtly from the pressures of the New York art symbolic works are sculptures scene. Although O’Hara studied at the Art such as “Valkyrie Rising,” in Students League and comes highly recom- which muscular, leathery, forms mended by distinguished artist/teachers with earthy-yet-fiery autumnal such as Knox Martin and Bruce Dorfman, colorations are combined with as well as by no less venerable an art world twigs to conjure up a raptor- figure than Ivan Karp, he initially developed like creature; as well as other in relative isolation. pieces such “Feng Shui “Nanonest” For years, before enrolling in the Art Dragon” and “Capricornus the Students League and finding his mature its close proximity to the The Whitney Sea Goat,” whose titles tip us off to their style, O’Hara ran a country inn in the Museum of American Art), which are unlike mythic subject matter. Catskill Mountains, near Woodstock, New anything else being shown around town. By contrast, like the aforementioned York. Although he joined the Woodstock With forms that are at once graceful and “Gravity’s Yoke,” the large sculpture Artists Association and participated in their thorny, some of O’Hara’s sculptures thrust “Nanonest,” invites a variety of more group exhibitions (even setting up a gallery almost threateningly, commanding space ambiguous interpretations. This is a majestic in his inn to show his own work and that of with their aggressive scale and formal veloci- configuration of tangled branches that flow other local artists), he was free to develop at ty, while others are more laid back and med- vertically and list to one side like a ship’s his own pace. Like Lee Bontecou during the itative. Everything about O’Hara’s mixed mast leaning in a strong wind, entwined by long period when she withdrew from the art media pieces seems to suggest the organic other rugged organic materials that could scene and moved away from the city to world; yet one cannot quite pin them down suggest climbing vines or shredded sails. explore on her own, O’Hara drew energy as to species. In a freestanding sculpture “Nanonest” is possessed of a sinuous grace from his bucolic surroundings, arriving at a such as “Gravity’s Yoke,” for example, intri- that seems to transcend matter, even as it unique synthesis of nature and abstraction cate, baroquely furling and unfurling shapes impresses us with the rugged materiality of which is reflected as much in the materials soar vertically, suggesting some form of its surface and the formidable physical pres- that he employs as the imagery that he plant life. Yet these strange, sensual shapes ence of its overall form. creates . evoke a kind of growth unlike anything While partaking of the free attitude In the past couple of years, O’Hara has known on this planet, imparting to the toward form and materials that characterizes emerged into the mainstream, exhibiting in work a suggestion of science fiction–or at contemporary vitalism at its best, O’Hara different venues in Chelsea and now launch- very least, of elaborate botanical fantasy. invests his sculptures with singular imagina- ing a show of fourteen new works at Ezair Employing materials such as shredded tive qualities. Thus their technical adventur- Gallery, 905 Madison Avenue, from May 1 cloth, rawhide, large twigs and branches, ousness is directed toward unearthing and through 31, with a reception on May 4, hardened mushrooms, roots, plants and ani- expressing something profound, mysterious, from 6 to 8 PM. Yet he still maintains a cer- mal bones, O’Hara creates sculptures that and far beyond the outward appearances of tain distance from all the hype and hubbub can seem to be 3-D cousins of the Surrealist nature. Obviously, Tom O’Hara is attuned of Manhattan by having his home and main painter Kurt Seligman’s tattered semi- to elusive energies and essences which studio in New Paltz, New York, and the abstract personages, with their mysterious escape easy definition, yet find vital benefits are obvious, judging from the ten mummy-wrappings flapping in the wind. expression in the dynamic flow of his recent sculptures and four wall reliefs in his Indeed, baroque form and surreal allusive- abstract forms. new exhibition at Ezair Gallery (a venue ness combine with a similar formal grace in —Ed McCormack that could not be more mainstream, given O’Hara’s pieces, some of which suggest

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 Irving Sandler: The Critic as Mensch of the Boulevards The title of the art critic Irving Sandler’s new the century memoir, A Sweeper-Up After Artists, published by well into the Thames & Hudson, calls to mind an old joke: The 1950s. guy who works for the circus, shoveling elephant Besides dung, is sitting in a bar complaining about his job. being a crit- “Why don’t you quit?” asks his drinking buddy. ic, Georges- “What,” he replies indignantly, “and get out of Michel was show business?” an amateur In fact, the title is a translation of “balayeur des artist (“ama- artistes,” as Frank O’Hara once referred to Sandler teur,” to the in a poem. Apparently, the poet meant it as a compli- French, is ment, and unlike the dung-shoveler in the joke, not a dirty Sandler never had a second thought after he word; it befriended the artists of the New York School in the means to be early 1950s and began reviewing their work for Art the opposite News and other publications. of a whore, Carter Ratcliff once called Sandler, the author of to do some- previous books such The Triumph of American thing “for Painting, The New York School, American Art of the love”). He 1960s, and Art of the Postmodern Era, “The New drew, as well York School’s recording angel.” In a recent Artists as wrote, Talk on Art Dialogue with artist Vernita Nemec, the just about critic admitted that he became the record keeper of every significant artist of his time. Indeed, Sandler’s The Club, the loft on 8th Street where the Abstract book reminds one of Georges-Michel’s memoir, Expressionists held their lively discussions, simply From Renoir to Picasso, its American edition pub- because he was such an inveterate note-taker. lished by Houghton Mifflin in 1957, but now unfor- Although I came to the art scene a generation too tunately out of print. Like Sandler’s, Georges- late to remember The Club, I once participated in an Michel’s book is full of wonderful stories, such as the Artists Talk on Art panel discussion and felt it was one about how Utrillo and Modigliani drunkenly probably as close as we come to having a similar came to blows over who was the best artist. Each forum today. Certainly Sandler, who was one of insisted that the other was best and when the other ATOA’s founding board members some thirty years disagreed they decided to settle the manner with ago, seemed very much in his element as he and their fists. In a denouement demonstrating that Nemec held forth in the amphitheater of the School Sandler’s buddies in the New York School were no of Visual Arts for an audience whose timeless nuttier than their forefathers in The School of Paris, bohemian demeanor enhanced the feeling that the Georges-Michel tells us that Utrillo and Modigliani spirit of The Club was still with us. ended up “in the gutter, where they went to sleep, Nemec kept the conversation moving and the sus- and woke up at dawn to find that they had been pense mounting with questions that she had written robbed.” out on strips of paper like the ones in fortune cook- Unlike Michel Georges-Michel, Irving Sandler ies, only bigger––an interview method auspiciously in never became even an amateur artist, but at least he keeping with her aesthetic as a performance artist took a stab at it when de Kooning, after compli- and founder of the Art From Detritus movement. menting him on his writing and asking if he had ever She would fish the strips out of a glass bowl and painted, said, “How can you write about what you unfold them teasingly, while the obviously bemused have no training in?” Sandler raised his bushy eyebrows like a man with Sandler took de Kooning’s words to heart. But several tickets awaiting the lottery results. Then he after a brief period of private study with painter would proceed to respond to her questions either with Landes Lewitin, a stern taskmaster who had him anecdotes from his book or off-the-cuff comments. copying illustrations of cubes, cylinders, and cones ad When Sandler mentioned in passing that some of absurdom, he decided to stick to writing. Still, he the New York School artists could be less than pleas- admires artist critics like Fairfield Porter and Elaine ant, the mischievous Nemec pressed him until he de Kooning, singling out the latter’s art reviews as named names––or at least one: Joan Mitchell, allow- especially insightful in his talk with Vernita Nemec. ing as to how she could be “nasty.” Overall, though, In his book, Sandler also credits the poets who wrote even when writing entertainingly about the eccentric reviews for Art News in the 1950s with helping him harangues of Aristodemos Kaldis at The Club, the to determine his own critical stance, saying, “My boorishness and brawling of Jackson Pollock at the criticism would be a record of my singular encounter Cedar Tavern, and the competitive back-biting of his with art in as a lucid, and hopefully vivid, prose as I fellow critics Clement Greenberg and Harold could manage. This was the approach of the art crit- Rosenberg in person and in print, Sandler is invari- ics to whom I felt closest, namely poets, often ably generous in his character assessments. His atti- referred to as the New York School of poets: Frank tude is every bit as upbeat as that of Michel O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Barbara Guest, and Georges-Michel, an earlier “balayeur des artistes” their younger associates Bill Berkson, Carter Ratcliff, who haunted the studios of Paris from the turn of and Peter Schjeldahl. Unlike them, however, I did

18 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 not have a personal literary style. York art scene in the 1950s was still a small, and Kline Consequently, I decided that the only way close-knit community where artists led the “inspired for me to write was clearly, which may have way rather than following the cues of deal- me to carve yielded its own kind of style; at least, so I ers, curators, collectors, and critics. When directly into hoped. Moreover, I believed that I owed it someone in the audience began to ask a the stone to to artists to be clear. They were, often, mys- question about “today’s art world,” we were make carv- tified by reviews of their work. They simply heartened to hear Sandler interject some- ing an could not understand the relationship thing that we’ve been telling people for a adventurous between most art writing and their work.” long time: “There’s more than one art happening.” Amen! world.” Pavia was Sandler goes on to say: “I would not Artists, especially, need to hear this; for the publish- restrict my criticism to formal considera- too many of them seem to feel irrelvevant er of the tions, as Clement Greenberg urged critics to because they are not showing at Gagosian influential do. Nor would I make it my primary goal or Mary Boone and being featured on the avant garde photos by Marisela La Grave to tell good from bad. Greenberg claimed front page of the Times’ Arts & Leisure sec- art maga- that a critic had to declare his or likes and tion. In fact, anywhere that there are gal- zine IT IS, dislikes in order to establish his or her cre- leries showing art and collectors buying it and his dentials. Standoffishly giving grades to art, constitutes an art world unto itself. work has as it were, went against my nature, which Yet, while allowing as to how the expan- been exhib- was to be an enthusiast. I wanted to expose sion of the art world is not necessarily a bad ited at myself to new art and try to understand thing––there are many more galleries, more MoMA, it––and my response to it.” exhibition opportunities for women and The What distinguishes Sandler from so many minority artists, and “a great deal of money Whitney, other critics is his genuine love for art, the sloshing around”–– Sandler, the gracious The Met, fact that he views it from the perspective of and self-effacing “sweeper-up after artists,” and the a fan and an advocate rather than a foe. He seemed genuinely nostalgic for the less- Albright has never made a career, as so many others moneyed but more intimate art scene he Knox have, of showing how smart he is at art’s recalls so vividly in his highly readable memoir. Museum, expense by wantonly attacking the honest among creative efforts of others in obscure jargon many others. which has no other purpose than to make Philip Pavia: The Sculptor But Pavia is still exploring, judging from the reader feel stupid. Sandler takes the as Curmudgeonly Legend the work at O.K. Harris, the only gallery in opposite approach, writing in plain English town with a cigar store attached, where its with a clarity and a genuine humility that director Ivan Karp, another great gent of comes across in his statement that “for me the same generation, holds forth in a haze the telling mark of a great work of art was a of curmudgeonly perfume that also perme- rush of feeling that left me momentarily ates the entire exhibition space. dumb. Writing about this rare sensation Pavia would probably crown me with this would be my greatest anguish. I aspired to mallet if I told him to his face that his heads make verbal language worthy of art.” have a presence akin to ravaged Job-like Sandler achieves that goal admirably in A Everymen of Leonard Baskin, a sculptor he Sweeper-Up After Artists, not only offering probably detests just on New York School crystalline insights into the origins of principle. But since he’s not in striking Abstract Expressionism but bringing an range, I’ll say it anyway, while admitting that entire era to life through his affectionate Pavia’s heads have a formal power beyond word-portraits of the painters who became Nobody personifies what Irving Sandler Baskin’s reach, a monumental quality that his friends and teachers. He delights in the refers to as the “unwritten motto” of The transcends humanist pathos. blunt humor of de Kooning, who when Club, “We agree only to disagree,” better Twice as large as living heads, their invited to dinner with the Rockefellers, than Philip Pavia, the scrappy sculptor who rugged surfaces bearing the imprint of the greeted his hostess with, “Gee, Mrs. was its main organizer and most vociferous sculptor’s hands as expressively as brush Rockefeller, you look like a million bucks.” voice. strokes, they shimmer with subtly colored He regrets being “totally unprepared” for Of the terra cotta heads in his exhibition patinas and chromatic under-painting. Their his friend Philip Guston’s evolution from at O.K. Harris Gallery, 383 West Broadway, features, craggy or eroded (depending on abstraction to funky, cartoon-like figuration through April 9, which are a departure from which angle you view them from), are set and disappointing the artist. But above all, the abstract black and white marble sculp- defiantly, suggesting the faces of ancient he remembers days and night spent in stu- tures he showed at Broome Street Gallery a emperors recovered from an archaeological dios, at the Club, at the Waldorf Cafeteria, couple of years ago, Pavia says, “I like to dig. at gallery openings, and the Cedar where he think these heads shoot up with skyscraper Pavia, being Pavia, would probably deny listened avidly to the endless talk of his artist space and have the psychology of the New it, but they are self-portraits, showing the friends, always with his note-pad at the Yorker.” gritty genius of a man whose stubborn per- ready. Pavia, born in 1915 and one of the few sona bleeds through the terra cotta like Especially poignant during his talk with sculptors among the Abstract Expressionist some indelible human stain. Vernita Nemec at the School of Visual Arts group, once said of his earlier work that ––Ed McCormack were Sandler’s recollections of how the New painter friends like de Kooning, Pollock,

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 Santiago Zarzosa Paints Poignant Portraits of Our Human Foibles rom an early age, Santiago Zarzosa, his compositions and impart unexpected the exhilaration of her velocity vicariously. Fwho characterizes himself as a beauty to even his most down-to-earth In another painting called “In Your “European artist from Spain, established in subjects. Face,” Zarzosa makes a strong statement Minnesota since 1997,” says that he “liked In his painting “Hungry,” for example,” with the image of a barebreasted woman in to be alone and get lost in my imagina- the boldly exaggerated female figure is seen profile, set against a brilliant blue back- tion.” And although he studied intensely in in the process of devouring a kind of ground; while “Recycled Aviator” trans- schools in Spain and Minneapolis and baguette sandwich popular in Spain called spent countless hours in the museums here a “bocadello,” the equivalent to our hero and abroad, his work has never lost a cer- or submarine sandwich. It is hardly a hero- tain childlike sense of wonder. ic subject, yet Zarzosa paints it with a com- In his recent show at Montserrat bination of warmth and humor akin to that Gallery, 584 Broadway, Zarzosa revealed of Red Grooms, showing the woman eat- how retained innocence can be combined ing “on the run,” with houses and other with graphic sophistication in a series of details of the street in the background oils on paper notable for their imagistic adding to the hecticness. freedom and symbolic content. Each of Indeed, a bemused compassion for the Zarzosa’s paintings was accompanied by a human condition appears to be at the heart wall-label containing a short text by the of Zarzosa’s art, as seen in his painting artist. While these were enjoyable and “Shy,’ where he personifies a sense of the added to one’s understanding of Zarzosa’s childhood embarrassments, disappoint- Painting by Santiago Zarzosa artistic intentions, his visual images spoke ments, and traumas that we carry with us eloquently for themselves. throughout our lives in the poignantly dis- forms a zany pilot at the stick into a All of Zarzosa’s figures are painted in torted figure of an awkward, clown-like metaphor for renewal. bold outlines enclosing brilliant color areas man with clumsy, oversized feet. But he All of Santiago Zarzosa’s paintings, in with a Pop-inflected, cartoon-like quality also captures simple joy in an equally bold fact, are brilliant embodiments of humanity akin to that of Jim Nutt and other mem- portrait of a nude pregnant woman enti- in all its delightful variousness, captured in bers of Chicago’s “Hairy Who” school. tled “Expectation,” as well in another images that become powerful, yet light- Zarzosa, however, has his own brilliant painting called “Speed of Blonde,” where a hearted, symbols of both our beauty and palette, influenced by his formative years peroxide babe on a motorcycle is seen rac- our human frailty. He is an artist who amid the colors of the Mediterranean. The ing down a city street, and by virtue of his holds a mirror up to the viewer, enabling earthy browns, green vegetation and the vigorous drawing style and vibrant colors, him or her to smile at the pathos of our various blues of the sea and the sky enliven Zarzosa enables the viewer to experience common lot. ––Maureen Flynn “Blacker Than Thou” And Better Than Most frican-American History Month invari- captures a sizzling kiss between two various floral and paisley patterns are seen Aably exposes the tokenism at the core of entwined adolescents on an atmospheric city sequentially in large grids created with sewn the American art world by acknowledging street populated by stoop sitters and other fabrics. One of Fremont’s wall hangings established masters like Romare Bearden neighborhood denizens who mind their b-i- conveys the verdant renewal of Spring with and Jacob Lawrence, while ignoring emerg- business while young love blooms like flow- various green hues, while another employs ing artists of African descent who deserve ers in a window-box in their midst. red to evoke the all-enveloping heat of notice not only in February but all year Although executed in oil on canvas, the Summer. long. Fortunately, shows such as “Blacker figure compositions of Imo Nse Imeh are Nicole Titus energizes her portraits of Than Thou,” curated this past February by more drawn than painted. Imeh’s heroic fig- people of color with vigorous brushwork. Al Johnson for the West Side Arts Coalition ures belong to the African American graphic Titus conveys the tensions inherent in the at Broadway Mall, on the center island at tradition of Charles White. However, lives of her sitters through her gestural 96th Street and Broadway, help to remedy Imeh’s draftsmanly configurations of linear finesse, which simultaneously captures a this situation. forms also possess a spontaneous energy sense of character and brings the surface Johnson himself showed his recent evolu- akin to abstract expressionism. alive in purely painterly terms. Anthony tion from symbolic Afrocentricity to urban More in a painterly mode, the iris giclee George, on the other hand, employs a more realism, in a group of powerful recent can- prints of the artist called Anton combine exacting realist technique in paintings of vases. They ranged from a funky inner city abstract areas of red and ocher with a decid- flowers that have the frontal quality and street scene reflected in the shiny car of a edly African feeling with silhouetted figures individuality of portraits. Indeed, George’s slick player in shades; to a Neo-Ashcan School elongated in a manner reminiscent of floral subjects are as portrait-like as his actual vision of undergarments flapping on a tene- Alberto Giacometti. Anton’s compositions portrait of a beautiful African woman in a ment clothesline; to a pair of tense-look- ing are characterized by a bold gestural ele- costume as elaborate and colorful as an dudes peering through an uptown window gance. entire bouquet of flowers! as though under siege. All of Al Johnson’s Diane Pryor-Holland bills herself as The Also including characteristically fanciful recent acrylics skillfully combine edgy snap- Klothkeeper and creates large works in cot- Afro-Cuban-inflected acrylics on canvas by shot immediacy with classical realism. ton fabric and batting that merge African the coloristically intrepid Joey Infante and a By contrast, Nicole Folkes brings a more fabric motifs and patterns with modernist group of conceptual sketches by fashion nostalgic perspective to “Visual Messages of aesthetics. Pryor-Holland’s dynamic wall designer Xiomara Goodsell Grossett that the Black Experience,” to quote the show’s hangings are further embellished with transcended commercialism by sheer virtue subtitle. In an expressively exaggerated figu- miniature masks and figures that lend her of their linear zest, “Blacker Than Thou” rative style akin to Benny Andrews, Folkes compositions a sense of ritual and mystery. amounted to an outstanding mini-survey of paints older folks dancing at church socials Vickie Fremont is another gifted fiber recent trends in African-American art. or playing cards with goodnatured wit and artist, creating large compositions in which ––Peter Wiley

20 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Philip Martin: Romance Meets Postmodern Allegory hose who know him best for jazz high above the palm trees of a small island Tscenes tinged with a melancholy lyri- surrounded by a sea that could be any- cism akin to that in the best poems of where in the world where mighty powers Langston Hughes may be surprised by the cast their shadow in the name of a dubious allegorical subject matter in Philip Martin’s interests. But then again, since the artist has new exhibition of drawings, inspired by stated that he depicts music as a goddess Tiepolo, at Belanthi Gallery, 142 Court rather than one of the Muses because “at Street, Brooklyn, from May 2 through 28. its greatest, music soars above her sister (There will be a reception for the artist on arts,” one can only assume that all interpre- Saturday, May 7, from 6 to 8 PM.) tations of this intriguing drawing are bound A superb neoclassical draftsman, Martin to be subjective. is as adept as Reginald Marsh at delineating However, a far less ambiguous sense of the curves of voluptuous female figures. how politicians can defraud us into sacrific- Yet one gets the feeling that Martin is as ing even our precious children comes much in love with the humanity as with “Standing His Ground II” across in another masterful pen and wash the feminine beauty of the women he female figures looming like wrathful drawing by Martin called “Chicken Hawk.” draws. In the present exhibition his affection Amazons to dwarf men. In one such pic- Here, a procession of women cradling is made especially explicit in an exquisite ture, “Standing His Ground II,” a tiny guy babies in their arms or clutching their preg- pencil portrait of a radiant young woman in a battered top-hat makes a gun-gesture nant bellies marches toward an outdoor with a winsome expression tellingly titled “A with his finger at three female giants striking Punch ‘n’ Judy podium where a grotesque Lady,” as well as in a pen and wash drawing bodacious rhythm and blues trio poses, as male creature with a rooster’s crown raves of an artist at his easel contemplating a they dance ankle deep in a flood that and waves his arms in the air. comely, fully clothed model. One senses a appears to be devastating the landscape. Here, as in his other recent superbly exe- palpable electricity crackling between the Although two of the women are wearing cuted pen and wash drawings featuring a two people in the latter drawing, even clinging dresses, one is nude and has the cast of symbolic characters, Philip Martin before noticing the neatly lettered inscrip- head of a lioness. approaches the graphic power of Goya’s tion “Beware the jaguar in repose” at the Another drawing called “The Goddess great series “The Disasters of War,” even bottom of the composition and the tiny jun- Music” features a statuesque nude sporting while enlivening his allegories with an irony gle cat reclining near the model’s chair. a spiked crown suspiciously like that of Lady that is decidedly postmodern. Other drawings by Martin suggest more Liberty. Clutching a violin to her breast and ambiguous relationships, with monumental brandishing its bow like a sword, she stands ––Ed McCormack Atmosphere Equals Poetry in the Oils of Regina Miele egina Miele works in a manner for public park in New York City. However, Rwhich the most accurate term is “poetic the artist creates the sense of a pastoral realism.” What romanticism exists in her oasis in the midst of the urban miasma work is created through her careful atten- with a brush that appears to have been tion to what actually exists, rather than dipped in liquid light. Luminous yellow through imaginative invention or fantasy. hues are combined with cool blues And the effectiveness of this approach was (almost reminiscent of some of the col- everywhere evident in Miele’s recent exhibi- ors in Monet’s paintings of his garden tion at Agora Gallery, 415 West Broadway, in Giverny) to create a sense of tran- in Soho. scendence that is made all the more Even while adhering to the evidence at remarkable by the fact that this picture hand, however, Miele creates magical actually depicts an urban setting. atmospheres and auras akin in some ways to Apparently, Miele is able to imbue those in the paintings of the more abstract any scene with a sense of serenity that artist Loren McIver, well known in the makes her paintings delightful anom- 1950s, whose work has been featured in alies in contemporary art. Her work several recent exhibitions. Indeed, like indicates a singular sensibility combined “Rooftop Morning” McIver, Miele has a way of enveloping all of with impressive technical finesse, as seen her pictures in atmospheres that create the in a small oil on panel titled “Roof evocative, however, is the oil on linen enti- gentle inner glow of something fondly Top,” with its panoramic view of clustered tled Autumnal Equinox,” with its tiny figure remembered as well as something carefully houses under a darkening sky, as well as in in a shadowy landscape contemplating a vast observed. Space and light conspire in her the much larger oil on linen called “Above night sky, which projects a sense of noctur- exquisitely refined oils on linen to create the Harlem,” where the various furnishings and nal mystery reminiscent of the German sense of a genuine epiphany in a way that fixtures of a room interior with daylight romantic painter Casper David Friedrich. few other artists are capable of doing who flooding in create a formal composition that Here, as well as in “Vernal Equinox” and work only with the subject at hand and do while true to its specifics can also function as “Winter Solstice,” two tall vertical oils cen- not distort it for emotional effect. an austere geometric abstraction. tering on the full-length figure of a young In Miele’s painting “Bryant Park,” for Miele’s drawings are also extraordinary man in a shadowy interior, Regina Miele example, the elements of the composition for her ability to invest the medium of displays a poetic gift which sets her apart as are extremely simple, almost minimal: five graphite with a painterly finish, particularly a realist painter with a unique angle of outdoor chairs positioned in a seemingly in the atmospheric “Alley, 14th Street,” vision. random manner on the lawn in a familiar with its subtle, overcast tonalities. Especially ––Maureen Flynn

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 Adrián Jesús Falcón’s Marriage of the Indigenous and the Modern

drián Jesús Falcón, an architect, painter, almost to the bursting point with rhythm Aand sculptor who lives and works in a and movement, declare their originality as border town in Texas, has found a unique surely as the woven textures in the petates medium that he has recently made an inte- that he paints on declare their indigenous gral part of his aesthetic. In his first New origins. His palette, dominated by hot reds, York exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 584 brilliant blues, and ochers, also recalls the Broadway, Falcon showed four large paint- fiery qualities of Orozco, Rivera, and the ings on “petate,” large mats hand-woven Mexican muralists. Yet he employ such hues from palm leaves by an indigenous tribe in with an even more brutal force. Mexico. Petate are traditionally utilized for a Falcon fills large areas of his textured sur- variety of purposes in Mexico–– including as faces with color, then works over them with surfaces for drying coffee beans, for floor vigorously slashed lines that appear to allude coverings, as bed mats–– and are said to to both human and animal anatomy without date back to the Mayans and the Aztecs. quite spelling anything out. Even in his Employing oil paints, acrylics, wood- most abstract compositions there is the spir- filler, glue, and charcoal, Falcon creates bril- it, if not the actual appearance, of the figure liantly colored compositions that are all in the energetic thrusting of his brush and abstract, except for one picture called the sense of velocity that it injects into the “Haven,” in which a large hook-nosed face picture space. There are also hints of land- looms in profile like an oversized puppet in scape space in Falcon’s abstract shapes, as a Punch and Judy show. This picture is though to suggest that all things in nature “Militant” called “Haven,” a title that suggests that the must ultimately meld. in which lines intersect suggests how any figure may be seeking shelter by getting lost A painting called “Militant” lives up to its gesture can be interpreted in a variety of dif- among the surrounding abstract forms. Yet name by virtue of its gestural violence. By ferent ways. it ends up standing out as distinctly as the leaving an area of the woven petate bare of Indeed, it is his ability to invest his paint- sharply silhouetted figures in Toulouse- paint in another work called “Idiom,” ings with a many meanings, even as they Lautrec’s posters for the Moulin Rouge. Falcon seems to call attention to how a lan- impress us on a more immediate level with Stylistically, Falcon’s work seems most guage––or in this case a craft form–– can their brash beauty and bold scale that makes akin to the Dutch painter Karel Appel; how- epitomize a particular people. And in a Adrián Jesús Falcón’s first New York exhibi- ever Falcon’s brilliant color areas, filled composition called “Ambiguous,” the way tion an auspicious event. ––Peter Wiley Will Brady: An Aesthetic Holden Caulfield Takes His Best Shot s the “East Village” exhibition at trait of a particular sensibility. appeared to be pieces of found wood. AThe New Museum demonstrated The entire installation was redolent One had a simple red triangle as its cen- earlier this year, youthful iconoclasm of American adolescence viewed from tral motif; the other featured a roughly can have an irresistible energy. It is nec- the jaded perspective of one moving brushed figure, possibly inspired by a essary from time to time to blow fresh toward a new definition of self, yet cartoon action figure or science fiction air into the cultural atmosphere, even if already nostalgic for the dubious com- character, emitting gray rays that the only way to do so is by trashing all forts of home, where there was always streamed outward from it to the edges that has come before. And that is exact- someone to tell him to clean up his of the composition. ly what a young artist named Will room. Indeed, some of the more amus- Although both paintings made every Brady seemed determined to do recent- ing images in the show were a series of effort to appear dashed off (with the ly in his jocularly titled “A Very photo album snapshots of a room, pre- artist’s initials signed in pink bubble-let- Famous Exhibition,” at Montserrat sumably in a college dormitory, so clut- ters resembling the Warner Brothers Gallery, 584 Broadway. tered with garbage of all descriptions as logo and evoking the specter of Bugs Brady’s show was an installation con- to seem an installation in itself. Of Bunny!), they actually revealed a strong sisting of two paintings, three large bins course, there are precedents for this sense of composition and a certain neo- stuffed with old books and a scrapbook kind of disorder in so-called “scatter expressionist panache that may prove filled with snapshots and cryptic notes, art,” as well as in the much more elabo- talent is something that cannot be easily all seemingly making an autobiographi- rate installations of older installation disposed of simply by affecting a flip- cal statement about the trauma of leav- artists such as Jason Rhoades and Mike pant attitude. By the same token, one ing the detritus of childhood behind Kelly. Brady, however, manages to make would have to be either naive or a fool and moving into the uncertain realm of more of less, while striking a posture as not to realize that “A Very Famous adulthood. Brady approached this studied in its psuedo-dumb nihilism as Exhibit” is a conceptual gesture of con- theme from the perspective of an arche- that of Sean Landers. tempt aimed at “the goddamn phonies” ologist sifting through the debris of his Ironically, the two paintings included of the art world by a young artist own psyche. The artifacts of self that he in the installation reveal serious artistic adopting the persona of an aesthetic assembled made an overall statement ambition, even while appearing to sneer Holden Caulfield. As such, Will Brady’s that was artlessly glib yet cumulatively at craft and give the finger to art histo- show was an unqualified success. effective in creating a psychological por- ry. Both were painted on what ––Marie R. Pagano

22 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 William Goodman: Erotic Elegies and Southern Gothic Pop

n William Goodman’s “Junkyard straight off the phone-sex classifieds who IPortrait,” in his recent solo show at Agora lure us from within lurid Dayglo worlds Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea, a where broken neon signs blink out a stutter- structure that the eye initially reads as a run- ing concrete poetry, at once erotic, elegiac, down house-trailer, but is actually an aban- and downright mysterious. In “Billboard doned railroad car, sits forlorn in an over- Junkie,” for instance, a ghostly hipster face grown field in an overall orange haze. Its in Rocky Raccoon mascara, taking a drag on side is scrawled with indecipherable graffiti a cigarette, fills a window near the roof of a and the stenciled face of a woman who structure with only the letters “K” and “R” could be a punk rock star or the mass mur- visible on its facade. Above the roof is a derer Gary Gilmore’s skinny brunette girl- bleary blue sky with one wan orphan cloud friend Nicole. Overlaid with artful splashes drifting by, and above the face in the win- of blue that conjure up the mood as much “Junkyard Portrait” dow is one of those stone gargoyle-like lions as the hue, the entire scene suggests Center, Goodman appears to belong to the that often adorn old architecture, supposed- unspeakable desolation. And how, one visual branch of the Southern Gothic School ly to guard against evil spirits. . . But don’t wants to know, did that railroad car find its we normally associate with such literary fig- count on it in this particular Heartbreak way out into the middle of that field? Only ures as Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty. Hotel! one thing’s for certain: It’s the End of the Yet he inhabits a more media-saturated era In “35 mm Drop Box” and “Hotel Line, baby... than their bygone magnolia realm; so his Memories” corroded signs, crumbling walls, Part of what makes Goodman’s mixed frame of reference is a little–– shall we say–– and gated windows are juxtaposed with media works so intriguing is trying to funkier? He partakes of the the same wicked vixens striking mock-sexy poses as decode meanings that are not exactly spelled Punk/Pop sensibility as Southern rock they loom iconic above it all, distantly out, but merely alluded to in cryptic frag- bands equally conversant with Sid Vicious scorning the desire they inspire among ments of text, photo-appropriations, and and John Lee Hooker in a picture such as marks, johns, and other suckers who still painterly gestures laid down with slapdash “Erotic Cinema,” where a line-drawing of a possess the capacity to dream. elegance. Though never sure where handgun is superimposed over a shadowy Such images are bathed in hellacious lay- Goodman is taking us, we’re willing to fol- face and juxtaposed with stenciled store ers of fluorescence and further enlivened by low him into the heart of a darkness that he hours more suitable to a nursery school luscious drips that rain down like torrents alone knows how to navigate. than a porn theater. of crocodile tears on this neon netherworld A native of Jackson Mississippi, where he Let’s just say Goodman puts the flash in that William Goldman evokes to such piti- is now artist-in-residence at the Fondren white trash with images of sultry sirens less perfection. ––Lawrence Downes Andi Kavaja: An Albanian Artist’s Gift to the United States ne of the privileges of the postmodern schtick. Oera is the permissiveness that enables Kavaja’s sun-drenched Italian landscapes certain painters to mix genres which once and cityscapes are especially exhilarating for seemed irreconcilable. While the Symbolists, the artist’s ability to capture a sense of light for example, felt obliged to react against the and life with breezy strokes and a palette of scientific objectivity of the Impressionists by incandescent yet subtle colors. His skies are bathing their scenes in artificial auras, artists especially luminous in a view of pedestrians today seem able to resolve such conflicts congregating in a plaza amidst majestic amicably by integrating disparate elements. European architecture; as well as in a land- A splendid example of such a synthesis scape where the rooftops and steeples of a can be seen in the work of Andi Kavaja, an small village are set against mountains, the artist born in Albania in 1970, whose paint- chromatic magic achieved through a harmo- Painting by Andi Kavaja ings are on permanent display at World Fine nious melding of violet, purple, and blue sense of an underlying narrative or personal Art Gallery, at 511 West 25th Street, in hues. allegory rife with intriguing symbolism. One Chelsea. For one of the salient features of In one particularly vibrant canvas, a lush especially appealing example is his painting Kavaja’s oeuvre is his ability to invest his pic- autumnal tree blazes before a tall stone of a white-haired, white-bearded painter tures with personal poetry and emotional steeple rising into a bright blue sky that is seated at a table in his studio, a bottle of immediacy, even while capturing nuances of enlivened by rhythmically rolling wisps of wine and a candle on the table before him, a light and other aspects of landscape with cloud. In another strong landscape, the canvas on an easel in the background. The unfailing accuracy. dominant element of the composition is a sage-like artist gazes contemplatively at a Since the late 1980s, Kavaja has amassed yellow ocher field dotted with red flowers. graceful feminine figure, seated primly an impressive exhibition history in his home- On the high horizon, clouds billow up like across from him. The spectral quality of the town of Durres, the second largest city in white smoke behind a row of verdant hills second figure suggests that she may be a Albania, as well as in Italy and elsewhere. and trees in one of those brilliant blue skies Muse, rather than a living model. Also in (Italy has been particularly receptive to his that Kavaja conjures so convincingly. the background is a cabinet on which plates work, with prestigious exhibitions, prizes, Indeed, he seems equally adept at capturing are arranged, as in a tidy peasant home. This and press coverage awarded to the artist in the serenity of nature and its more tumul- detail, with its folkloric associations, seems Udine and Verona.) More recently, he has tuous qualities, putting a visionary spin on to suggest Kavaja’s awareness that an artist begun to attract favorable attention in New both that heightens the impact of the every- must remain true to his ethnic heritage, York City, where his combination of direct day world. even as he enters the mainstream of contem- observation and subjective interpretation Andi Kavaja’s portraits and figure paint- porary art, in order to imbue it with his seems a refreshing anomaly in an art scene ings are equally exciting for his ability to own unique cultural riches. all too often mired in self-conscious stylistic invest his subjects with character and the ––Ed McCormack APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 Savoring Jung Ahn’s Gestural Dialogue with the Natural World “ ature speaks in silence sometimes and approximation or visible illusion of land- and roughly scumbled textures apparently Nat other times loud as thunder,” scape, what we feel in her compositions is achieved by piling on thick layers of impas- states Jung Ahn, who earned her BFA at the the forces and energies of nature freed from to. Often, Ahn appears to rake paint across University of Minnesota and her MFA at the constraints of specific subject matter. large areas of the canvas, resulting in streaks the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. “I Without having the lay of the land mapped that create an effect like sunlight reflecting keep searching to find my personal internal- out for us in conventional terms, we navi- on water or ice, particularly when she ized alphabets.” gate Ahn’s painterly terrain as an overall employs luminous golden yellow hues, as Ahn, exhibiting as artist in residence in seen in the large canvas called, aptly enough, the Chelsea location of Agora Gallery, 530 “Reflection.” And while Ahn obviously West 25th Street, from April 9 through July makes no attempt at literal depiction, her 9, employs nature as a starting point for her use of variegated vertical streaks of color in abstract oils. Calling upon a palette of earth some compositions, such as the smaller colors and subtle secondary hues, Ahn cre- painting “Going Deep,” also suggests the ates compositions that alternately brood and visual sensation of viewing a landscape shimmer with strong chromatic contrasts. through sheets of heavy rain. Likewise, in She applies pigment in bold gestural strokes the medium-size painting “Refuge,” the that alternate between tactile opacity and amorphous white forms create an translucent glazes. Deep browns reminiscent inescapable sense of floating cloud forma- of Cubism’s measured monotones, but even tions. more redolent of earth itself, merge with Even as one hastens to caution the view- golden ochers, frosty whites, and crystalline “Refuge” er against reading too many specific refer- blues to infuse Ahn’s compositions with an environment. We experience light and air as ences into her paintings, lest he or she be impressive lyricism. ethereal yet palpably pigmented elements, distracted from their purely abstract attrib- The actual size of Ahn’s canvases range simultaneously material and possessed of a utes, there can be no denying that Ahn’s from a foot square to over six or eight feet, more metaphysical reality. gift for evoking natural atmospheres yet all suggest seemingly limitless wide open Indeed, Jung Ahn’s paintings are as enhances the lyricism of her compositions. spaces by virtue of her ability to invest every much about the nature of painting itself as Thus the viewer would be better advised to picture with a monumental sense of scale. about the artist’s perceptions of phenomena approach the paintings of Jung Ahn with no She also has an ability to evoke a poetic in the visible world. One gets caught up in preconceptions at all; to simply savor them sense of light, water, and sky, without overt- the sheer sensuality of her surfaces, with with a fresh eye for the singular pleasures ly delineating or even alluding to any specif- their vigorous variations between smoothly they provide. ic topology. Rather than any pictorial flowing passages of virtuoso paint-handling ––Peter Wiley A Mixed Bag of Styles Enlivens “Opening New Worlds’ Group Show orks by several artists associated Bernardo Diaz suggested the complexi- Reena Kondo is a consummate collageist, Wwith the West Side Arts Coalition ty of human relationships in his neo- here represented by a cosmic tondo called were seen in the exhibition “Opening expressionist painting “Family Portrait,” “Levels of Reality,” with intriguingly New Worlds,” curated by Ina Simmons in which bizarrely distorted figures are ambiguous imagery aswirl in blue noctur- and Lucinda Prince at Broadway Mall connected by strange abstract forms, hint- nal infinity. Sacchi Shimoda makes Community Center, on the center island ing at the sometimes negative emotional Marilyn Monroe an icon for a variety of at 96th Street and Broadway. ties that bind us by blood. Patricia themes: painting her on a small canvas Simmons, best known for her cut- Tallone-Orsoni also explored human con- affixed to a larger composition copied paper works, showed two pastels from her nections in a large mixed media collage from Mondrian in one work, casting her “Transformation Series,” featuring juxtaposing pencil portraits torn from as Lady Fortune dealing out a Joker in abstracted floral forms, seemingly in a sketchbooks, painted passages, architec- another, to comment on the nature of process of metamorphosis. Their sinuous tural images, and raw strips of packing fame and fate. organic shapes were as similarly graceful as tape, all combined with tactile vigor in a Another gifted figurative painter, those in her cut-paper pieces, albeit with catch-all composition aptly titled “Human Jeremy A. Sykes puts his own spin on softer edges and more muted colors. Package.” photo-realism, painting such subjects as Lucinda Prince showed two oils depict- The paintings in Meyer Tannenbaum’s city streets, a couple sitting on a sofa, and ing scenes in New Mexico, to which her “Soft Impact” series seem a culmination preening mall-dolls with a kind of snap- earthy tones and strong sense of composi- of all his earlier experiments with paint shot panache that lends his acrylics on tion imparted a formal quality that manipulation. Their vibrant colors and canvas considerable impact. worked well in concert with their more map-like forms are so pleasingly evocative Then there is Miguel Angel, who con- picturesque aspects. that one can only hope that this notori- tinually demonstrates a singular ability to Yookan Nishida finds beauty in deso- ously restless painter will exhaust all their transform unlikely materials into exquisite late areas of Brooklyn’s waterfront in sub- possibilities before moving on to whatever aesthetic statements at once formal and tly surreal oils where warehouses, small new challenge catches his fancy. poetically penetrating. In Angel’s sheds, bridges, and shadows project a A new, more lyrical facet of the ever- “Immutable,” a shiny compact disc, a sense of poetic mystery under luminous engaging, sometimes over-the-top Joey fibrous material that may or may not be yellow skies. By contrast, Erica Mapp Infante’s work was evident in a group of decomposing carpeting, and the artist’s advances a stringently abstract aesthetic in charming French landscapes, especially a unerring eye for exactly where everything serigraphs composed with rectangles of view through a rustic window with bril- belongs create a material metaphor at subtly harmonizing color, their poetic liantly colored fields resembling the pat- once intriguing and elusive. titles hinting at meanings beyond their terns in a patchwork quilt. considerable formal appeal. Like the California artist Jess Collins, ––Maurice Taplinger 24 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Tomas Patrick Quigley: Lighting Up the Dark Side of Life omas Patrick Quigley, a widely terrible hangover. in its own manner as Edvard Munch’s T exhibited British painter and poet Quigley’s canvases are often “The Scream.” who recently showed at Montserrat accompanied by verses such as: “If I Among all of Quigley’s paintings, Gallery, 584 Broadway, and whose paint / Let it be with gold / And my perhaps the most diabolical is a very work is included in the gallery’s year- hands / And the butter of colour / large horizontal canvas called “The round salon, has an ability to simplify And if I sculpt / Let it be Men / Bar at the End of the World,” in the human figure in a manner that And Women.” In this case, both the which a group of figures seated at a amplifies its emotional impact. poem and the painting are titled bar is delineated in a sinuous, con- Quigley’s figures are stark, often fea- “Wax,” and the figure does indeed tinuous line that glows like molten tureless, yet they never seem general- look waxen with its yellow flesh and neon out of a deep blue background. ized. Indeed, he invests his figures its liquid contours seem to be literal- “Share a drink with me / Etch a with a visceral presence akin to (if ly melting against the glistening red memory,” implores the accompanying not as gratuitously grotesque as) the ground. Here again, the plastic quali- couplet, and it could very well be the figures of his famous countryman ties of the image suggest existential Devil himself speaking, given the Francis Bacon. distress. Indeed, Quigley seems to atmosphere of melancholy decadence In Quigley’s large canvas “The specialize in depicting those extreme that permeates the picture. Weekend,” a pale nude figure mod- moments in a life when the dark Yet the line linking the drinkers, eled with blue shadows merges with night of the soul is made manifest in each of whom displays a unique atti- the labial folds of an overstuffed the flesh. tude of hellish languor, is possessed orange sofa to the point where it Indeed, even Quigley’s painting of of an impressive draftsmanly grace appears decapitated. The sofa floats two lovers merging into one poly- and the glowing colors have an within a deep blue ground, suggest- morphous mass, glowing with incan- autonomous beauty that makes the ing an island in the sea, in keeping descent gold and green hues and painting throb like Allen Ginsberg’s with the figure’s quality of profound against a deep red ground pulsing hydrogen jukebox. For Tomas Patrick isolation. Given the title of the pic- with rhythmic strokes, suggests that Quigley is somehow able to illumi- ture, and the Ostrich-like retreat of there may be hell to pay later on for nate even the darkest nights of the the figure, one might assume that their all-consuming passion. For all soul by virtue of his radiant aesthetic this isolation may be of the type that its sensuality, in other words, this abilities. one must endure in the throes of a image is almost as visually harrowing ––Lawrence Downes Pioneer Spirit Persists in the Abstractions of Rachelle Ayres he English painter Rachelle Ayres to color construction recalls Hans sense of something infinitely more T is a lyrical expressionist who has Hofmann’s statement, “ I hold my spiritual. Yet, here as in all of Ayres’ reduced her painterly vocabulary to a mind and my work free from any paintings, one attempts to interpret few basic forms and gestures with association foreign to the act of them at one’s own peril. For her which she succeeds splendidly in painting.” This is true even when compositions are, above all, charac- conveying a wide range of moods. In her forms verge on more figurative terized by an abstract autonomy that her recent American exhibition at themes, as in paintings such as makes subject matter seem quite Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway, “Untamed,” where the subject is beside the point. Ayres seemed especially partial to ostensibly an ocean wave. For all Indeed, as titles such as “Inner wavy lines that filled her composi- such imagery appears to be merely a Mood” and “Heather’s Rage” indi- tions with a sense of swelling and starting point for painterly explo- cate, her inspiration appears to spring contracting rhythmic energy. ration in Rachelle Ayres’ canvases, from emotions and states of being Ayres is also a cunning colorist, which show a purity of intent that is more than from tangible phenomena capable of making even areas of unusual in postmodern art. Also in the external world. Perhaps more brown and tan resonate chromatical- quite unusual, not to mention intrep- than other contemporary artists, this ly, in the canvas she calls “Comfort.” id, is Ayres’ willingness to let each desire to capture the ineffable However, she by no means restricts painting determine its own stylistic relates Ayres’ paintings to the work herself to subdued hues, as seen in direction, making no attempt to con- of Kandinsky, Malevich, and others the painting she calls “Dreamer,” trive a “signature” style like so many who invented abstract painting in where unlikely combinations of pink of her peers on both sides of the their attempts to find a language for and gold enliven a composition built Atlantic. the esoteric, rather than that which on sinuously swirling forms. Here, This enables her to veer from the can be seen. Their pioneering spirit she invests colors that could be con- cursive forms of the aforementioned appears to persist in the paintings of sidered gaudy in another context canvases to the vocabulary of rectan- Rachelle Ayres, even as she charts with a rare beauty by virtue of her gles and staggered lines in the paint- new territories to explore. It is her fresh approach to form, as well as her ing that she calls “Shimmer,” where combination of talent and daring that ability to meld and reconcile oppo- thickly impastoed squares of gold are makes this gifted British artist an sites effectively through some inex- set against a red stratospheric color exciting discovery and makes one plicable aesthetic alchemy all her field. While the diagrammatic com- look forward to her future forays own. position could almost suggest electri- onto these shores. Ayres’ non-referential approach cal circuitry, this painting projects a ––Maurice Taplinger

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 At New Century Gallery: 5 Five Postmodern Visions “ rawing is the new painting,” a fellow of colors and large canvases. In elements of Dcritic recently declared, and while one fact, one of the virtues of Cezanne with would not wish to join him out on that Lerer’s drawings is the direct- both the lyrical shaky limb, this publication did run a cover ness and simplicity not only of abstractions and story a few issues back called “Decade of the his means but of his imagery. contrastingly funky Drawing,” and it does indeed appear that From comicstrip super heroes, figure paintings of works on paper in general, have come into to the sculptures of Rodin, to Philip Guston. their own in the past couple of years. his most recent pictures of an However, Olexa One show among several that signaled Afghani soldier raising his takes a totally dif- the trend a year ago was “Express: Five weapon, an uncharacteristically ferent approach in Emerging Artists,” at New Century Artists, pensive Harpo Marx surround- his collages, cut- 530 West 25th Street, and now the same ed by grinning admirers, or a ting some of his group of artists has returned to the same stereotypical Old West cowboy photographs into venue with “Express 2: Dreaming.” (The and stagecoach, Lerer makes strips and weaving exhibition runs from March 29 through every subject resonate with the George C. Olexa them back togeth- April 16, with a reception for the artists on peculiar qualities of an inner world where er to create new works in which fragments Saturday April 2 from 3 to 6 PM.) diverse figures of popular myth all share a of imagery flash evocatively from abstract grainy, media-inflected graphite vernacular. grids. Like Lucas Samaras, Olexa appears to By imparting the same sense of nostalgia to be one of those artists who relies on a yesterday’s news photos as to older sources quirky conceptual sensibility rather than a remembered from childhood, Lerer neutral- signature style to impose a consistent vision izes contemporary anxiety by inserting it on his various projects. into a comforting alternative reality. Even Although he exhibited a group of por- when commenting trenchantly on current traits last year with a decidedly “art brut” events, his drawings freeze his subjects into quality, in his recent series of thirty small iconic images, providing the viewer with a black and white pen and ink drawings, Fritz fictive refuge from the relentless onslaught Erismann employs a refined and fluid line in of what Robert Brustein calls “news the- the meticulous manner of a medieval manu- ater.”. script illuminator to weave Linda Dujack Linda Ganus, on the intricate visions he refers to other hand, blows drawing as “Dreamscapes.” One of the featured artists, Linda Dujack up to epic proportions, Generated subconsciously is primarily a printmaker; however, her dry- investing her works in char- through meditation, mixing points and collagraphs display all the best coal on paper, graphite on memory and desire, infused attributes of drawing, with their casual linear vellum, and charcoal and with hints of a baroque grace and their buoyant forms that float as acrylic on canvas with all eroticism, Erismann’s freely as air balloons on the picture plane. the scale and presence of ornately convoluted com- Although Dujack’s prints are inspired by ambitious painting, yet positions merge human, events in her life, she has evolved a lively retaining the linear qualities animal, landscape, and abstract shorthand with which to convey a that we associate with archaic architectural ele- host of elusive yet evocative meanings. drawing. Thus Ganus’ large ments with sinuous linear Dujack’s art presents us with a world of painting “Two Figures after Linda Ganus grace. intriguing private Titian (Sacred and Whether or not one symbols that we can Profane Love)” ––in which two agrees that we are in the midst of a new either attempt to women, one wearing a bridal veil, the graphic renaissance, “Express 2: Dreaming” decipher or simply other in dishabille, lean on a white is an exhibition which proves beyond a savor as formal enti- piano–– displays her draftpersonly abili- doubt that ties. However, given ties as prominently as her black and some of their suggestive bio- white drawing of a Sphinx with Mona the most morphic shapes and Lisa’s face perched atop another piano exciting Dujack’s ability to in a marinescape as the surf rolls in. work to be invest every line While the latter image may sound sur- seen these with a sense of life real, it is actually pervaded by the sense days is by and lively incident, of narrative angst that makes all of artists who it would be difficult Ganus’ work so compelling: Even the broaden not to find her most outlandish imagistic juxtapositions the defini- compositions evoca- in her pictures take on a logic that is tion of tive on several levels more psychological than picturesque, contempo- simultaneously. For suggesting that we are privy to some rary draw- example, only a Mark Lerer dark internal drama. ing to complete dullard George C. Olexa, who exhibited include could fail to be seduced by the fanciful poet- edgy digital photographs of urban subjects various in the previous installment of “Express,” has mixed ry of the exquisite little drypoint that Fritz Erismann Dujack calls “Moonhouse.” turned more recently to pastels of the Irish media and Mark Lerer can say more in the rudimen- countryside, abstract compositions in just about anything else that can be done tary medium of pencil on small sheets of encaustic, and photo-collages. One of his on paper. paper than many artists do with a full palette pastels, “Cliffs of Moher” appears to merge ––J. Sanders Eaton 26 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Hope Carter’s Unlimited “Fields” of Imaginative Possibility

ith the over-hyped spectacle of in this manner, are encircled by a WChristo and Jeanne-Claude’s thicker length of black yarn laid out mammoth project in Central Park still on the floor in a loose, graphic man- fresh in memory, one encounters the ner. more modest oasis of Hope Carter’s These linear configurations made intriguingly ambiguous installation, this viewer think of the rhythmically “Fields of Fire,” at Phoenix Gallery, swerving lines in Brice Marden’s 210 Eleventh Avenue, from March 30 “Cold Mountain” paintings, and by to April 23. (There will be a reception extension of the waves and rivulets in for the artist on Thursday, Mach 31 classical Chinese scroll painting. Only, from 6 to 8pm.). Carter achieves her calligraphic evoca- While “The Gates” seemed to interi- tion of natural forces with yarn and orize nature by cutting off the sky string, rather than a brush, and the when one walked the footpaths under overall effect is like a Japanese rock those billowing saffron skirts, Carter’s garden that has suddenly become ani- installation, entitled “Fields of Fire,” mated by the machinery of natural brings nature inside in a manner that movement. Viewed in this way the can be quietly awe-inspiring. yarn flowing around each stone could When the Phoenix Gallery moved to appear to be ripples around a river its new quarters in Chelsea last year, rock and the graceful white arches of Hope Carter was called upon to design clustered strips could suggest foamy the space. Consequently, every artist splashes bouncing up from rain drops! who exhibits there will benefit from Of course, this is just one admitted- now on from her exquisite eye for pro- ly subjective interpretation (very differ- portions. As for Carter herself, she says, ent from the fiery fields or aftermath “It is quite an experience to be able to of a forest fire to which the title show my work in a space that I person- appears to allude) among many that ally created,” and the airy feeling of the this installation will indubitably inspire. gallery is auspiciously suited to her Indeed, Hope Carter admits to being installation. surprised and fascinated by how every- Air has always been an important one always seems to find different element in Carter’s work anyway. To Detail from “In Fields of Fire” meanings in the limitless range of enter into one of her pieces–– and one is invisible monofilament from the gallery ceil- physical metaphors that she creates invariably invited to walk through her instal- ing, forming willowy arcs. From the center with the most unlikely materials. lations rather than viewing them from out- of each of these forms, a black string dan- “There is symbolism to spare in the side as discrete entities–– is to become aware gles down with a small red lead weight piece; none of which was deliberately con- of one’s own breathing and the subtle fibri- attached to its end. On the gallery floor, ceived,” she says of her latest installation. lations that every movement sets off in the about eighteen inches immediately below “Therefore I will leave it to the viewer to delicately poised components, charging the each weight, sits a medium-size gray river discover their own individual response to surrounding atmosphere. stone. While some of the stones are bare, the many ideas that can be drawn from a In the new piece, some thirty clustered others are tied with a red string in linear walk through these ‘fields.’” forms, created with long, thin strips of mat patterns seemingly as varied as the veins in a board tied together, are suspended with leaf. All of the stones, whether bare or tied ––Ed McCormack SECRETS Curated by Stefania Carrozzini Transcending Reality D’ARS International Exhibition Projects April 9 – April 30, 2005 APRIL 7 - MAY 7, 2005 Reception: April 14, 2005 Opening reception: Thursday, April 7, 6- 8PM SHOW HOURS Michael Erion Tues & Thurs Noon - 6pm Sat 2 - 4pm Glenn Lawrence Liddy ARTISTS Richardo Angel Norte REBECCA BALLESTRA • VALENTINA CANTONI Merja Parikka GEPPO MONZIO COMPAGNONI• RAFFAELLA CORCIONE PIERLUIGI DE LUTTI • MARIA TERESA MAZZOLA GIORGIO TONTI • SONJA STOERR CVB SPACE 407 West 13th St. Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm (Betwn. 9th Ave. & Washington St.) 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea NY, NY 10001 New York, N.Y. 10014 AgoraGallery 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 646.336.8387 cvbspace.com www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 Dorothy A. Culpepper and the Alchemy of Embedded Memory

o paint as Dorothy A. Culpepper does letters––suggest that a more semiotic com- Tis a profound act of faith. For ponent is surfacing in Culpepper’s work Culpepper persists in believing in the which may make itself felt even more power and passion of Abstract overtly at some point in the future. For Expressionism in an era rife with post-pop now, though, the gestural emphasis still irony, technological gimmickry, and con- holds sway, with the added objects most ceptual gamesmanship. often covered entirely by densely layered However, the power of Culpepper’s skeins of splashed and dripped color (here conviction comes across emphatically in again the primaries to which Culpepper her new exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, seems partial), even as their contours 584 Broadway, from March 29 through assert themselves more prominently than April 16, leaving no doubt in the mind of in her previous paintings. the viewer as to the wisdom of her deci- Coloristically, one of the richest among sion to pursue her lonely, lyrical path. Culpepper’s new group of paintings is the Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in work that, with characteristically punning Alberquerque, New Mexico, Culpepper playfulness, she has titled “Log On,” in has exhibited widely in New Mexico, as which a configuration of stacked wood well as in Paris and New York. She has that does indeed resemble a log pile is won critical acclaim, particularly in her positioned at the center of the composi- exhibitions at Montserrat Gallery in recent tion, where large, triangular expanses of years, for her spontaneous style. Often blue green and red converge and are over- working on a large scale in acrylic and “Shell Shocked” laid by the inevitable skeins of dripped mixed media, Culpepper employs the by paint, here laid down in a particularly now time-honored technique of poured and can be read quite literally by those rhythmic manner in looping white strands paint, albeit controlling the flow in such a with a literal cast of mind (many of whom that whip over the surface with tremen- way that she can achieve deliberate effects would probably come up with their own dous velocity. rarely seen by others working in a similar interpretations differing greatly from the One of the first things that strikes one manner. Indeed, her paintings are filled preceding one), it is hardly necessary to on entering a gallery filled with with carefully choreographed rhythms cre- explicate Culpepper’s paintings in this Culpepper’s work is the sheer physical ated with skeins of pigment that she lays manner. For while such second-guessing presence of her paintings, even when they down in many successive layers, building can be enjoyable, her compositions func- are on easel scale, like many of the pieces up sumptuously tactile surfaces that com- tion sufficiently in purely abstract terms to in her present show. Whether working in pel one as much for their materiality as for provide limitless funds of aesthetic pleas- large, medium-size, or relatively intimate their lyrical sense of movement. ure. formats, Culpepper imbues her paintings Culpepper often enhances the rugged- At the same time, the artist herself does with a sense of scale that transcends their ness of her surfaces by adding nails, bits of little to discourage such interpretation; in actual dimensions. By virtue of her overall wood, wire, shells, glass, or other materials fact, it would seem that she enjoys provok- approach to space, she convinces us to to her pigments as textural elements. ing it with playful titles such as “Shell perceive her surfaces as vast terrains, even However, in some of the most recent pic- Shocked.” This is a composition in which without the obvious natural signposts that tures on view in the new show at sea shells play a prominent role in the we see in the work of certain other Montserrat Gallery, these elements have composition, scattered among flowing abstract painters who allude more overtly taken on an even more significant role, areas of blue, yellow, and red hues, their to landscape. functioning not only as textural enhance- white surfaces adding not only tactile By the same token, a bucolic feeling ments but as prominent parts of the com- accents to the composition but also comes across in a painting such as “In the position. enhancing its swirling sense of movement Garden of Uncounted Souls,” where fluid One such work is the painting that in much the same manner that buoys bob- areas of green and blue could suggest an Culpepper calls “Escape Through the bing in ocean surf will amplify the rhythms aerial view of verdant land masses and Window,” where lengths of rounded wood of the waves. waterways. Here, too, layered drips are create a roughly rectangular form at the In other new paintings by Dorothy A. conspicuously absent and the piece de center of the composition, suggesting a Culpepper, the collage objects come even resistance is a multitude of brightly col- barred window in which some of the bars more prominently to the forefront of her ored beads clustered at the center of the have been removed to facilitate the escape compositions, even, paradoxically, when picture space, with bent twigs creating of the title. Here, too, a concentration of they are submerged more deeply in pig- counter-rhythms around them. The beads nails scattered within the wooden rectan- ment, lending her painted surfaces the suggest the ones on an abacus; yet rather gle suggests a glittering constellation, an quality of bas-relief. One such example is than being bound to a rigid wire to be slid effect which is further enhanced by splash- in the composition called “Here Comes back and forth for purposes of counting, es of white pigment. Within and all the X,Y,Z’s,” where shards of wood, large they are clustered like flowers in a garden, around the window-like rectangle, green cut-out alphabet letters, and other sub- which lends poetic resonance to the title and yellow hues splashed into the deep stances too thoroughly embedded in paint Culpepper has given this work. blue ground suggest a view of a nocturnal to be readily identifiable, are employed in Fairfield Porter, a realist who was par- sky through foliage and trees. a manner akin to some of the relief paint- ticularly sensitive to abstract painting, once However, while “Escape Through the ings of Jasper Johns. Indeed, these ele- stated that “art is measured by an interior Window” is a highly evocative painting ments––particularly the cut out intensity,” and this would seem to apply

28 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 especially well to the paintings Dorothy A. Culpepper, which shim- mer with an inner vitality that we normally associ- ate with living organ- isms. Porter went on to say that a painting only possesses this interior intensity when “some- where along the way the greatest possible atten- tion has been paid to something whose impor- tance to the artist is a measure of its reality to him.” Although it is not always as obvious as in the previous exhibition that she dedicated to the memory of her late hus- band, one gets the sense that Dorothy A. Culpepper’s composi- tions always result from the careful attention that she pays to things of great importance to her, metamorphosed as they may be by the process and language of painting itself. Encountering a painting such as “A Moment in New York,” her exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, for example, one knows for certain that it really does commemorate a unique moment in the specific city to which the title refers. One need not know, however, the par- ticulars of the memory or why Culpepper has chosen to juxtapose col- orful beads and vigor- ously applied areas of brilliant primary hues to feel the intensity of the moment. It is inherent in every inch of the compo- sition, with its rhythmi- “War of Hearts and Flowers”, Acrylic 48"x36" cally flowing areas of Culpepper’s paintings is invariably the how the material can become metaphoric fiery color. And like all of Culpepper’s material substance of paint and the physi- when it is enriched by the subtext of paintings, it does what all good abstract cal phenomenon of what happens when human experience. This, in fact, is a form painting is supposed to do by capturing a forms and colors are combined in a certain of alchemy, and Dorothy A. Culpepper sense of the ineffable. way to bring about an aesthetic epiphany. accomplishes it several times over in her Clement Greenberg once stated, “The However, the content of her work is far newest exhibition at Montserrat Gallery . subject, the references of a work are not more mysterious and elusive; for it has to the same thing as its content.” And do with the metaphysical phenomenon of ––Byron Coleman indeed, the ostensible subject of

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 Discovering Elissa Lieberman’s Eerie Contemporary Allegories n the past two decades, we have witnessed Their predatory attitude suggests that the Ia resurgence of narrative and allegory in woman might be in danger were she not figurative painting, most recently in the protected by some unseen force. large canvases of Elissa Lieberman at Such subjective projections on the part of Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway. the viewer lend Lieberman’s paintings a Lieberman’s work is firmly rooted in the dark psychological drama that can also be tradition of the old masters, yet filled with seen in a smaller canvas depicting a man signifiers of contemporary life such as the sandwiched between two women in a cafe, Bic cigarette lighter brandished by one of the moon visible through the picture win- the women in the large canvas called “Our dow at their back. Even to this ostensibly Lady of the Highways.” This is a somewhat simple subject, Lieberman brings a mood eerie figure composition in which several suggesting a tangled, emotional menage a women are gathered on a hillside around a trois. Somewhat more surreal is another religious statue resembling the Virgin Mary. canvas entitled “Dream,” in which a sensual Below them, cars with glowing headlights sleeping nude is juxtaposed with a large egg, stream along a dark highway. The women a snake, and human figures riding the backs appear solemn as they engage in a ritual that “Resting” of large birds. Here, the title itself gives the suggests some sort of vigil for those who introducing an epic quality to contemporary artist leeway to indulge in especially fantastic have perished in automobile accidents––or figure painting. Lieberman, however, em- imagery, while a larger oil called “Resting” else a prayerful ceremony on behalf of the ploys a more expressionistic technique and depicts a nude woman and a clothed man in safety of those still traveling. The artist adds elements of romanticism to invest her a pastoral landscape where smaller figures in shows considerable skill in evoking a noctur- large canvas with its own peculiar poetry. gossamer white garments romp near an nal atmosphere, her handling of light and In another large nocturnal scene, a beau- ancient sailing ship on a distant beach. Only, dark reminiscent of Georges de La Tour. In tiful woman in a clinging, patterned dress the broken and bloodied birds that the man Lieberman’s painting, however, the Bic stands amid a flurry of pigeons that swirl up clutches disturb the serenity of the latter lighter substitutes for the candlelight La into the night sky, turning shadowy as they scene, limned in limpid twilight hues with Tour often used as illumination in several of recede in the distance. Dark city buildings the consummate skill that makes Elissa her paintings. with illuminated windows can also be seen Lieberman such a convincing conjurer of Elissa Lieberman’s “Our Lady of the in the background, as well as a cluster of dark personal myths. Highways” also calls to mind Alfred Leslie’s men who turn in the woman’s direction, ––Maurice Taplinger paintings memorializing the death of the their silhouetted forms defined at the edges poet Frank O’Hara for its bold approach to by light that may emanate from a lamp-post. Luminism Updated: The Landscapes of K.G. Weiss “ like to think that my scenes are responsi- medium and methods are quite different, Ible for lowering a few heart rates and Weiss’s ability to heighten the effects of could even help you to see or (at their best) nature and imbue every picture with a think more clearly,” states K.G. Weiss, a remarkable expressive intensity can be painter whose solitary childhood spent in likened to that of the great American water- marshes and woods left an indelible impres- colorist Charles Burchfield. sion that lingers in the landscapes he exhib- Amazingly, Weiss claims to have “only ited recently at Montserrat Gallery, 584 produced about one picture annually” for a Broadway, some of which can be seen in the period of twenty years before picking up a venue’s year-round salon. more prolific pace in his mid-thirties. This Weiss describes himself as a Luminist, suggests an artist in tune with his own inner claiming spiritual kinship with a movement rhythms, with little regard for the pressures in mid-19th-century landscape that John of the marketplace, and that independent Baur, who coined the term, described as “a attitude is reflected in his work: Each one of polished and meticulous realism in which his pictures looks inevitable, authentic, “Seven Stars in Cowtown” there is no sign of brushwork and no trace utterly original. of impressionism, the atmospheric effects “Bay Point,” for example, is a large view foreground, sharply focused and rendered in being achieved by infinitely careful grada- of a swampy landscape in which the sky great detail. They stand tall against one of tions of tone, by the most exact study of the dominates, with its streaks of yellow and those luminous, subtly colored skies at relative clarity of near and far objects, and by touches of pink that appear to bathe the which Weiss excels, and in the distance is a a precise rendering of the variations in entire composition in glowing natural auras. softly blurred row of verdant trees. Here texture and color produced by direct or With a stagnant pool of water surrounded and there, the composition is enlivened by reflected rays.” by high grasses, the atmosphere of the scene breeze-blown milkweed; the delicate white Weiss’s light-filled oils––which qualify on is at once desolate and transcendent. The puffs of pollen float through the air like lyri- all counts as contemporary manifestation of raw wood frame, reportedly made by the cal accents, filling the canvas with a sense of the Luminist sensibility––are created with a artist himself, with its pronounced wood- movement and immediacy. palette restricted to five basic colors: red, grain patterns, is an integral element, con- In these and other landscapes in his yellow, black, blue, and white. With them, tributing to the rustic quality of the overall recent exhibition, K.G. Weiss succeeded however, he mixes a limitless spectrum of statement. admirably in capturing what he calls “an hues that evoke all the many nuances of “Milkweed,” on the other hand is an orchestration of all things living together in nature in compositions that capture a unambiguously exhilarating picture. Three a syncopated moment of time.” heightened sense of nature. Although his slender stalks of milkweed are seen in the ––Wilson Wong 30 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Golden Auras Illuminate the Abstractions of Maria Teresa Quiñones bstract painting has had ly applied to the level of image, while a companion painting from the Ato find new directions in bas relief in the central same series employs a golden spider web order to survive as a viable form, also recalls the deca- against a yellow ground to somewhat more tendency in the climate of dent beauty of Gustav subtle chromatic effect. postmodernism. One artist Klimt and others of the Although some of Quiñones’s composi- who has arrived at a unique Vienna Sucession move- tions are notable for their combination of synthesis of pure abstract ment. However, Quiñones formal finesse and delicacy, others are con- form, atmospheric color, and sets this ornate golden trastingly rugged, even while possessed of a fin de siecle decorativeness is shape within a formal con- characteristic elegance. With its jagged band a painter, born in Colombia, text more akin to the early of gold running vertically down the center widely exhibited since the Color Field paintings of of the composition, Quiñones’s “Golden 1960s: Maria Teresa Jules Olitski, albeit also River,” for one example, has a craggy, crusty Quiñones. In her latest exhi- suggestive of a sky with quality akin to the uncompromising large bition at Montserrat Gallery, faint cloud formations illu- abstract canvases of the fiercely independent 584 Broadway, Quiñones minated by sunlight. The American painter Clyfford Still. Indeed, part showed several works in painting appears to be a of Quiñones’s talent is her ability to employ mixed media that were both hybrid creation that moves geometric and organic forms with equal aesthetically pleasing and in bold historical leaps effectiveness, introducing a great deal of for- highly original, not only in “Snail Looking for Light” toward a new species of mal variety into her compositions without technique, but in their for- postmodern baroque sacrificing those unique qualities which unify mal configurations as well. abstract imagery. Here, too, the artist cre- her entire oeuvre. One of Quiñones’s most striking paint- ates compelling contrasts between the thick Whether working with sensual curvilinear ings was the large composition called “Snail gold impasto of the snail symbol and the or more austere rectilinear shapes and color Looking for Light,” in which the piece de smooth, subtly modulated ground. areas, all of the paintings of Maria Teresa resistance is a slender spiral of brilliant gold In another intriguing painting, “From Quiñones share a compositional dynamism, metallic pigment which culminates in a long the Wisdom Series II,” Quiñones employs coupled with a chromatic shimmer, that sets vertical form rising against a field of lumi- exquisitely fine golden lines in a formation them apart. Her passion for form and her nous golden hues. The symbolic form of the resembling a glittering spider web superim- love of light infuse her pictures with a rar- snail becomes a graceful abstract symbol posed over a vibrant blue field. The painting efied quality unlike that of any other abstract characterized by a sinuous, serpentine grace has a timeless quality, simultaneously sug- painter at work today. reminiscent of Art Nouveau design. gesting natural and philosophical sources ––Peter Wiley Quiñones’s use of gold pigment, here thick- melded into an oddly compelling yet elusive Madalina: A Consummate Colorist Strikes an Emotional Chord hen those who do not understand plating her paintings can be a meditative blue and Wabstract painting attempt to condemn experience: one becomes engulfed in radiant purple-violet if for its lack of “content,” they are often auras created with layered translucent glazes hues seem to misguided about what content actually that evoke something at once material and flit across the means. If one takes it to mean specific, rec- ethereal. Indeed, the paradox in her paint- surface, play- ognizable objects, then there may be some ings is how successfully they engage us with ing hide- merit to their argument. But what about their purely physical properties while simul- and-seek feelings? Are they not another form of con- taneously transporting us to a realm beyond with the tent, and perhaps even capable of touching the physical. It is this tension between the viewer, as upon a broader range of human experience? succulent sensual presence of the paint itself well as in the “My paintings are not about sorrow and and the suggestion of transcendence in her relatively pain, but about hope, courage and a strong subtly shadowed surfaces that makes monochro- belief in miracles,” states the artist who goes Madalina’s work so consistently engaging. matic canvas by the single name Madalina, making her Her abilities as a colorist are especially “Purity,” intentions clear in a way that few other evident in paintings such as “Celebration I,” with its Color Field painters do. While painting of where a seemingly infinite range of softly amorphous, this sort is often presented as a purely for- modulated red hues evoke a visceral sense of gold-tinged mal endeavor, Madalina is unabashed in her passion, as well as in other canvas, such as central form “Harmony” desire to connect with the viewer emotion- “Harmony” and “Golden Light,” where she floating like ally in the works she exhibited in her recent explores the possibilities of metallic gold a phantom cloud in a glowing white field. exhibition in the Chelsea space of Agora pigments in combination with other hues to Madalina brings a refreshing new energy Gallery, at 530 West 25th Street. (As artists create chromatic effects of an almost to Color Field painting with her unabashed in residence, she will also exhibit in Agora Turner-esque radiance. desire to convey emotional qualities through Gallery’s Soho branch, 415 West Broadway, These latter works are among Madalina’s abstract means. And she succeeds splendidly from April 16 through May 7.) most opulent compositions, bathing the in engaging the viewer in her cause through And indeed, she invests her large acrylics viewer in chromatic auras of a peculiar rich- her ability to strike just the right chromatic on canvas with qualities that go far beyond ness. Standing before them, one becomes chord. At the same time, all abstract paint- their considerable formal qualities. In com- caught up in their tactile surfaces and the ing must finally stand on its purely visual positions enlivened by subtle chromatic sense of infinite depth that their delicate attributes, and Madalina provides the nuances and striking tactile qualities, tonal modulations project. She also displays sophisticated viewer with much to appreci- Madalina succeeds splendidly in projecting a her consummate skills as a colorist in ate in this regard as well. sense spiritual resonance. Indeed, contem- “Hidden Shadows,” where softly modulated ––Chris Weller

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 From the Angelic to the Sublime: Another View of Deborah Lee Galesi ne of the centerpieces tion with everything from Oof Deborah Lee Native American Culture Galesi’s recent solo exhibi- to the art of the Etruscans tion at the 584 Broadway and the ancient Egyptians, location of Montserrat as well as the New Age Gallery (which will include theories of Deepak her work in its year-round Chopra, among any num- salon on moving to its new ber of other passing inter- space in Chelsea), was a ests which invariably find large oil on canvas called their way into her pic- “Look Inside,” which took tures. An image especially its inspiration from the bib- emblematic of Galesi’s lical Psalm 23: “You prepare spiritual path is the oil on a table before me in the canvas she calls “Infinite presence of my enemies.” Dance of Bliss,” in which The painting presented a a figure that appears to be kind of freeform contempo- a symbolic self-portrait rary version of The Last floats above a volcanic Supper, populated by an landscape in a stratosphere eclectic cast of characters, where smaller beings of some in full color, others in pure light seem to surf on grisaille, representing several streams of purplish illumi- nationalities. They were nation emanating from gathered around a circular the stars. Here, on a can- table split down the middle, vas whose perfectly sym- as if by an earthquake, its metrical square format pyramidal opening revealing enhances the composi- a rainbow-vibrant realm of tion’s sense of infinite cosmic phenomena, moun- space, is a vision of tran- tain ranges, waterfalls, scendence to rival those of winding rivers, and verdant no less delightfully daft a foliage. Within this vast British visionary than the visionary landscape, which great William Blake! And could represent an earthly while this could seem an Paradise, a woman in native enterprise fraught with dress bathed an infant in peril for a contemporary “Swept Away by the Dolphin Vortex” shallow water, while white painter, Galesi possesses swans glided along, porpoises leapt through the lotus position holding a ceremonial staff both the technical skill and the spiritual con- the air in formation, and a luminous angel and a sort of sparkler god with luminous, viction to make the painting succeed. waded nearby. For all its multilayered imag- wiggling rays emanating from his entire Even more startling in conceptual terms, istic complexity, as the title “Look Inside” body can be seen levitating in the deep, yet just as successful in its own manner is suggests, the message of the painting nocturnal darkness surrounding the main the large oil called “Swept Away by the seemed profoundly simple: Look past the figures! Dolphin Vortex,” in which a dolphin with conference tables where bargains are struck In this large oil, too, the artist appears to the body of a woman rises like a Botticelli between government leaders and politicians be paying tribute to indigenous inspirations Venus out of the sea, set against a watery negotiating the fate of humanity to one’s and imparting wisdom channeled from the swirl that gives Galesi the opportunity to own inner being, where the real truth of ancients. Yet the real triumph, in strictly aes- flaunt her virtuoso painterly skills in one of existence lies within easy reach. thetic terms, is how successfully Galesi bal- her boldest, most dazzlingly Expressionistic One of the things that makes Galesi’s ances all of these disparate images within a compositions to date. work so fascinating is her willingness to take composition that goes far beyond the efforts Deborah Lee Galesi has already amassed risks that would daunt a less intrepid painter, of other international Neo-Expressionists in an impressive exhibition history around the as seen in another large canvas called her all-out willingness to share the truth of country and in various places abroad: “Infinite Quantum Leap: Infinite her experience with the viewer. For Galesi, a France, Japan, Australia, and particularly Possibilities,” which has become an native of Patterson New Jersey, this means Italy, where she is especially esteemed. She emblematic work of her career, having been calling upon the technical skills that she has also exhibited in New York City in the repeatedly reproduced in the Village Voice honed at the Art Students League in New past. However, the sheer range and scope of and other publications. In this composition York City and during a long period of study her most recent solo show at Montserrat a prehistoric hunter and another figure who in Florence, Italy, where she soaked up the Gallery (which included many more paint- appears to be a medieval knight brandishing methods of the Renaissance masters who ings than those described here, among them a long sword ride the back of a fire-breath- were her earliest inspiration, in order to smaller works such as the pensive nude ing dinosaur, while a huge wave of water make every image that she paints a palpable “Solitude,” presenting a more intimate side whooshes up behind the huge creature like representation of her inner reality. of her talent) seemed to make it a landmark a jet-trail, a white dolphin discernible within This a complex undertaking indeed, since in her career. its white foam. And far be it for Galesi to Galesi’s inner reality is fed by a variety of stop there: the figure of a shaman sitting in esoteric sources, which include her fascina- ––Maurice Taplinger 32 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Bob Tomlinson’s “Salome” Paintings: Anatomy in the Abstract

erhaps the most radical innovation of Pthe postmodern era is the artist’s embrace of a variety of sources, including literature, as starting points for an art that respects no boundaries. Bob Tomlinson, a scholar of French literature and aesthetics as well as a painter, exemplifies the permissive attitude of postmodernism when he states that “the frontier between figuration and abstraction is an illusion.” Indeed, Tomlinson makes this point with great visual conviction in his solo exhi- bition “The Dances of Salome,” at Viridian Artists @ Chelsea, 530 West 25th Street, from May 17 through June 4, with a recep- tion on Saturday, May 21st from 3 to 6 PM. The biblical story of Salome has inspired countless artists down through the cen- turies. Being a postmodernist, open to a wide range of influences, Tomlinson takes his inspiration not only from the original legend, but from Gustave Moreau, Gustave Flaubert, Stephane Mallarme, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and other predecessors who have produced memorable works on Salome. Perhaps taking to heart the French liter- ary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes’ theory, in that a text––or a painting, for that matter––does not release “a single ‘the- ological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God)” but a variety of meanings “which blend and clash,” Tomlinson creates compositions in which subject, sign, and gesture seem to be in a constant state of flux. Just as Barthes asserts that meanings in language are inherently unstable, Tomlinson exploits the ambiguity inherent in what we see through tensions between figurative and abstract elements and the “Dance #1: The Alternation” oil and collage on canvas 40x34" finesse with which he resolves them. While he does not “appropriate” in the This imbues Tomlinson’s work with a Tomlinson’s mastery of classical anato- sense that some postmodern painters adopt striking velocity, the drama of the painterly my, however, enables him to reintroduce preexisting imagery to their own uses, gesture animating the drama inherent in the beauty of the nude human body into Tomlinson puts into practice Barthes’ idea the subject matter, as seen in his oil and the contemporary aesthetic dialogue, even that a text or other work of art today must collage on canvas “Dance #1: The while retaining the abstract autonomy of his necessarily be “a tissue of quotations drawn Alternation.” Here, the animated abandon- forms. The sensual contours of his figures from the innumerable centers of culture.” ment of the partially nude dancing figure, enhance the flowing compositional rhythms In his present series, he does so by grafting her bare breasts and shoulders emerging in “The Apparition,” where the ghostly the spontaneous gestural calligraphy of from a loose garment that flows sinuously head of the prophet hovers Moreau-like Abstract Expressionism onto the romantic to the bottom of the composition, is above the voluptuous Salome, dancing subject matter of Symbolism, resulting in a evoked in a linear, graphic manner reminis- nude with her arms thrown up, as well as in vital synthesis of line, color, form, and alle- cent of Toulouse-Lautrec, both for its “Cantique of Saint John,” an equally lan- gorical meaning that lends the story of draftsmanly authoritativeness and the spare guorous male nude in predominantly blue Salome new energy and immediacy. elegance of its mixed media technique. hues. Tomlinson’s use of mixed media––usual- Employing red, orange, and ocher hues on Indeed, with their graceful balancing of ly oil paint with collage areas of patterned a cream-colored ground, Tomlinson flattens allusive and purely plastic elements, the paper highlighted by gold and silver his figure emphatically on the picture plane, paintings of Bob Tomlinson prove that it is foils––further enhances the sense of spon- and his use of pasted papers as integral ele- still possible to create compelling abstract taneity, coloristic richness, and subtle tactili- ments of the composition calls to mind the compositions without sacrificing the human ty in his work. His compositions appear to sharply articulated two-dimensional shapes figure and the rich range of symbolic and be process-oriented, the figurative refer- of the Abstract Expressionist collage artist emotional associations it invariably evokes. ences emerging from the abstract forms Conrad Marca-Relli, as well as the baroque during the act of painting, rather than the decorative qualities of contemporary ––Lawrence Downes other way around. Pattern Painting.

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 33 At Broadway Mall, a Complementary Convergence of Art and Craft

imilarities, as well as the disparities, in his own way by combining austere geo- visitors from some purely painterly realm, Sbetween fine and applied arts were metric forms reminiscent of Mondrian with particularly Margie Steinmann, who com- explored in the recent multimedia exhibition explosive Dayglo color fields. The dramatic bines School of Paris color with New York “Craft Art Plus,” curated by Elton Tucker contrast between formal and freewheeling School gestures in a highly successful syn- for the West Side Arts Coalition at elements animates Tucker’s paintings in thesis. Steinmann is not afraid to be chro- Broadway Mall Community Center, peculiar ways. matically seductive and rugged at the same Broadway at 96th Street. Vickie Fremont’s installation of boldly time, resulting in compositions at once vig- Leila Elias showed the interplay between patterned pillows mounted on the gallery orous and sumptuous. art and craft more overtly than some in her reminded one of Andy Warhol’s floating pil- Betty Thornton’s willingness to embellish dyed silk wall hangings, which took the lows at Castelli many years ago. Freemont, her paintings with potentially jarring collage form of stately yet colorful vertical triptychs, however, seemed to be making a different elements pays off handsomely in her picture their gossamer components suggesting more kind of point by also showing a selection of of a woman meditating by a pool with 3-D variegated cousins of the saffron skirts sus- her hand-made jewelry on the wall and foliage and fragments of mirror floating in pended from Christo’s “Gates.” thereby making us view craft items in a the air. Despite their miniature scale, Lori Babette P. Meltzer’s emblematic assem- whole new way. Fischler’s watercolors (often no bigger than blages of dice, mirrors, and other oddities Two other artists showed us new ways of postcards) do not come off as artistic have always had an element of craft about seeing folkloric elements: Painter Madi tschotkas; rather, they convey a sense of them; however, their zany intricacy is also Lanier positioned a brilliantly colored papier high artistic purpose with their lyrical, soft- akin Alfred Jensen’s paintings based on mache angel in a corner of the gallery in a focused treatment of landscape subjects. mathematical and metaphysical systems. manner that made it take on a surprising Miguel Angel skirts craft altogether to Ruth Lianillo Leal harked back to the sculptural presence, making clear how much turn careful arrangements of commonplace heyday of the East Village, in her painting of in contemporary art has to do with context. things into pure works of art. Here, Angel a big, octopoid blue tree reaching toward a Tomasa Perez showed intriguing handmade worked his alchemy with children’s marbles fat full moon hovering over mountain peaks dolls and collages in which cutout figures of and crushed bottlecaps within a sandy-tex- that looked like they were topped with glit- little girls had a poignant presence akin to tured hinged support, creating an object as tering costume jewelry. Like Laura Owen, the work of outsider master Henry Darger oddly poetic as a Joseph Cornell. one of the stars of the 2004 Whitney as well as two abstract watercolors with rec- ––Robert Vigo Biennial, Leal is a delightfully quirky talent. tangular forms in muted hues. Curator Elton Tucker goes out on a limb Other artists in this show appeared to be

•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•CLASSIFIED•

SERVICES folios. Please send slides, resume & SASE to: Museum of Modern Art. He is the Curator of Art Photography: Art works photography Montserrat Gallery 584 Broadway, NYC 10012. the upcoming “Drawings from the Modern, 4X5, 35mm slides & prints, B&W 1975 -2005” and author of “Jackson Pollock’s Experience, Reliable, Reasonable. All works WWW.NEWYORKARTWORLD.COM Late Paintings”.EXHIBITION: June 29-July guaranteed. Please call:Oudi @ 646-638-3734 is currently reviewing artists portfolios for 16, 2005. SLIDES DUE: May 14. Send SASE web gallery showcase. 212 228-0657 for PROSPECTUS to Pleiades Gallery, 530 OPPORTUNITIES E-mail [email protected] West 25th St. New York, NY 10001-5516 12 YEAR ESTABLISHED CHELSEA or download from www.pleiadesgallery.com. GALLERY. Quality exhibitions, location and COMPETITIONS Call: 646-230-0056. marketing. Currently reviewing artists. Online VIRIDIAN ARTISTS' 16th National Juried information requests: http://www.world Competition open to U.S. artists working in DIRECT ART MAGAZINE #12 - competi- fineart.com/inforequest.html 2-D & 3-D media. Entries juried by noted art tion for over $22,000 in publication awards critic & Guggenheim Museum curator Robert including covers and feature articles. Deadline WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION welcomes Rosenblum. Slide deadline: April 19th. 1st April 30, 2005. For prospectus e-mail members from all areas. Visual arts exhibits, prize: solo show/2nd & 3rd prize: 2 person [email protected], print from Internet theater events, multi-media opportunites. show. Group show & continuous slide show: at: www.slowart.com/prospectus, or mail Tel: 212 316-6024 e-mail: [email protected] June 28 to July 15. Send SASE for prospectus: SASE to SlowArt Productions, PO Box 503, VIRIDIAN ARTISTS INC., 530 West 25th St., Phoenicia, NY 12464 Established Chelsea Gallery reviews artist port- New York, NY 10001. Or download from our folios monthly. Send sase or visit www.noho web site: www.viridianartists.com www.gelabertstudiosgallery.com CUSTOM FRAMING PHOENIX GALLERY, CELEBRATING ITS PHOENIX GALLERY 2005 NATIONAL 47TH YEAR, has moved to 210 Eleventh JURIED COMPETITION: JUNE 22 - JULY Museum Quality Mounting Avenue @ 25th St., Chelsea, New York, NY 16, 2005. JUROR: TREVOR SMITH, • selected frames & mats 10001, is accepting applications for ACTIVE, CURATOR, NEW MUSEUM OF CON- • conservation framing INACTIVE or ASSOCIATE membership. TEMPORARY ART, NY. ALL MEDIA. (UV glass, acid free materials) Send SASE for membership application or AWARD: SOLO/GROUP SHOW. Deadline: • shadow boxes - float & dry mounting Email: [email protected] Website: APRIL 26, 2005. Prospectus: Send SASE, • canvas stretching and stretcher www.phoenix-gallery.com Phoenix Gallery, 210 Eleventh Ave., 902, New construction York, NY 10001. Website: www.phoenix- • discount for the trade and artists 18 yr.-old midtown west international gallery, gallery.com [email protected] seeks new artists for next season. Street level. Jadite Galleries Share cost. Call (212) 315-2740 PLEIADES GALLERY presents its 23rd 662 10th Ave. bet 46 & 47 Sts. Annual Juried Exhibition. Open to all media. Tel. (212) 977 6190 Mon.-Sat. 11-7pm. Soho Gallery is currently reviewing artist’s port- This year’s juror is Jordan Kantor of the jaditeart.com

34 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 Richard Hickam Dances on Painting’s Slippery Slope e get so accustomed to certain con- itself. However, histrionically, Wventions in even the most progressive to ignore the occupying center painting that, usually, when something is human subtext stage in a drama really fresh, at first it looks a little in his paintings of scumbled tex- wrong––or at least a bit “off.” Of course, would be to do tures and drips. few paintings in our shock-proof era could the breadth of He appears to be seem as initially monstrous as de Kooning’s his talent a seri- bleeding pigment “Woman I” did before time made it a mas- ous injustice. as he warbles his terpiece. But it is still possible, every once in Yes, his pictures swan song in a a great while, to encounter work that looks are filled with smashing crescen- “wrong” in just the right way. delectable do of dynamically The paintings in Richard Hickam’s recent painterly tidbits, converging con- solo show at Allan Stone Gallery, 113 East such as “blub- tent and form. 90th Street, were a wonderful example. bery” impastos Then there is Initially the colors could strike one as stri- (to borrow de “François the dent almost to the point of garish. And why Kooning’s terrif- Flirt,” a real piece should a face or a figure be so lusciously ic term) that of work with his painted yet so comically distorted? Then appear to shake big clodhoppers you realize that it is exactly his willingness to like the jowls of planted firmly on negotiate that slippery slope between high a hanging judge the orange floor, art and caricature that makes Hickam’s work denying an as he leans off his so daring, so exciting. appeal, as well as chair into the In his first solo show at Allan Stone all kinds of “The Tenor” 2004 vibrant area of Gallery 31 years ago, Hickam’s realist figure splashy, drippy green at the edge paintings looked flawless in a smooth, glis- effects that activate the surface in pure visu- of the large canvas, presumably schmoozing teningly juicy manner influenced by Wayne al/tactile terms. But Hickam also creates some object of his affections just outside the Thiebaud. Then he got restless and started characters of an almost Dickensian subtlety. picture area. Hickam captures this oily char- painting small expressionist heads and larger, Flaunting the former taboo regarding the acter’s personality in the very viscosity of looser figures in a manner influenced by “literary” in gestural painting with post- the paint surface, making for a perfect mar- Richard Diebenkorn. Over time, after a modern panache, he makes us become riage of message and medium, just as he fruitful foray into abstraction in the 1980s, engaged with his people, even as we savor makes oils a palpable surrogate for mostly Hickam returned to the figure and assimilat- his paintings for their abstract virtues. bare flesh in another large canvas of a volup- ed the influences of Thiebaud and Consider for example, the self-satisfied tuous and abandoned female dancer wittily Diebenkorn, making them peculiarly his fellow in the painting Hickam calls “The titled “Fall Exhibition.” own. The juicy afterglow of Thiebaud is still Teacher,” with his thatchy yellow hair, his In the latter picture, especially, the creamy present in his work, but it has been liberated goofy white grin splashed into his scrubby colors highlighted by incandescent edges are by Hickam’s unique gestural velocity. And if brown beard, and his tumescent red necktie. most beholden to Thiebaud. However, Diebenkorn paints generalized “figures” Bracketed between vigorously brushed color Richard Hickam dances to his own wild that serve as mute compositional place-hold- areas, a rogue splash of pale purple enliven- drummer and his paintings, with their ers, Hickam paints people, with all the ing his brilliant blue blazer, “The Teacher” expressively distorted forms and deliciously messy emotional baggage that distinction radiates an edgy energy akin to Robin confectionery colors, are in a class all their implies. Williams playing an eccentric academic. In a own. As in the case of most good painters, the larger canvas called “The Tenor,” the singer ––Ed McCormack real subject of Hickam’s work is painting crouches on one knee clutching his throat

Abstract Lyricism 12 April 16 – May 7, 2005 Reception – Thursday, April 21, 2005 Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Inc. Annual Members Exhibition 2005 Dominique Ladoux Madalina Victoria Moore Zemborain The Broome Street Gallery Elin Neumann 498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 Za Woo April 5 - 24, 2005 Hours: 12 - 6 PM Closed Mondays Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 415 West Broadway, SoHo New York, NY 10012 Reception and awards: Agora 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 Saturday April 9th 3 - 5 PM Gallery www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO 35 Hope Carter . The Search for Inner Peace April 9 – July 9, 2005

Artist in Residence Jung Ahn Detail from “Fields of Fire” Detail from INSTALLATION “In Fields of Fire” March 30 - April 23 Reception – Thursday, April 14, 2005 Reception: Thursday, March 31, 6 - 8pm Phoenix Gallery Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6pm 210 Eleventh Avenue (Ste. 902) New York, N.Y. 10001 Agora 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea NY, NY 10001 Tues. - Sat. 11 - 5:30 212 226 8711 Gallery 212 - 226 - 4151 / Fax: 212 - 966 - 4380 [email protected] www.phoenix-gallery.com www.Agora-Gallery.com / www.Art-Mine.com

Philip Martin Recent Works May 2 - 28, 2005 Reception Saturday, May 7, 6 to 8 pm Belanthi Gallery 142 Court Street Brooklyn, NY 718 855 2769 Hours: Mon - Fri 2 - 7 Sat. 10 - 4

Selections of Artists Recent Works Carefully Chosen for this Exhibit

curated by Emily Rich

April 6 - 24, 2005

Adam Adrian Brostow, Diane Casey, Bernardo Diaz, Carolyn Kaplan, Margo Mead, Elizabeth Moore, Yookan Nishida, Betty Odabashian, Emily Rich, Fernando Salomone, Sacchi Shimoda, Elisa Zeitler The GALLERY&STUDIO advertising deadline for the Broadway Mall Community Center June/July/August issue is May 10 Broadway at 96th St., NYC (center island) for color, May 17 for black/white. Wed 6 - 8 pm/Sat & Sun 12 - 6pm 212 316 6024 Call for rates: 212-861-6814 [email protected] www.wsacny.org

36 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005 WINDOWS pat feeney murrell

conundrum IV”, handmade paper body wrappings, lifesize man and child paper personae Jose F. Rios May 19 – June 24, 2005 April 19 - 30, 2005 THE INTERCHURCH CENTER Reception: Saturday April 23rd, 5-8 pm TREASURE ROOM GALLERY 475 Riverside Drive at 120th Street, New York, NY, 10115 Gelabert Studios Gallery 212-870-2200 www.interchurch-center.org for directions 255 West 86th St., NYC 10024 212 874 7188 Gallery Hours: Mon–Fri, 9AM–5PM Closed Sat/Sun Tues - Sat 1- 6 pm www.joserios.net artist’s studio: [email protected] 14 SCULPTORS “iconomics” at C M LEVY PARK Bridgeport, Conn. October 2004 through July 2005

ARTISTS: Richard Brachman Ursula Clark Allan Cyprys Robert Dell Esther Grillo Donald Kapela Estelle Levy Siena Porta Herb Rosenberg Lila Ryan

“Andy Beats The Drum” 42 x 60", mixed media on pastel cloth EXHIBITION SPONSORS: May 17-June 4, 2005 Parks Department & Mayor John Fabrizi Reception: Saturday, May 21, 3-6pm City of Bridgeport Rockaway Artists Alliance, Inc. 530 West 25 St., 4th Fl., New York, NY 10001 PLEIADES Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11-6 pm 646-230-0056/Fax 646-230-0056 EXHIBITION COORDINATORS: GALLERY www.pleiadesgallery.com Allan Cyprys, Esther Grillo and Peter Lundberg

APRIL/MAY 2005 GALLERY&STUDIO Dorothy A. Culpepper Recent Paintings “In the Garden of Uncounted Souls,” acrylic and beads, 30" x 24" March 29 - April 16, 2005 Reception: Thursday March 31, 6 - 8 pm

GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2005