Jan Dibbets: Early Work / Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th St / February 13

This exhibition of early photographic work was completed from 1969 to 1977 and reflects Dibbets� structuralist period (1967 to mid �70s) plus his later studies of perception.  Born in the Netherlands in 1941, Dibbets began as a painter but turned to photography in the late 1960s.

All of the work in this show is fascinating in its breadth and depth. There is a very easy mix between Dibbets� sensual expressionism along with conceptual and minimal approaches. It is easy to enjoy all of these aspects for, to varying degree, they appear in nearly all the work.  Mostly though, it is his Color Studies that are universally appealing as purely abstract work. Each consists of four individually photographed car hoods on square panels.

These beautifully alluring pictures clearly demonstrate Dibbets� knowledge of painting and translate that understanding into photography.  He gets a substantial amount of mileage out of such plain subject matter by employing all the elements found within it.  The deeper colors contrast and blend beautifully with reflected highlights.  Reflected and actual lines are used exceeding well as composition elements while providing gravity for the ephemeral elements.  The end result is that each becomes a rich and complex symphony of color within an environment of smooth fluid texture.  This sensual side provides an inviting portal that draws you into the other aspects of the work.

These photographs compete well against painting (an obvious part of what the artist has targeted) and on their own terms. You know right away that they are simply photographs of car hoods but you don�t care. That�s because their composition and sensual charm has transported the content to something far beyond the recognizable subject matter.  Herein lies the conceptual aspect of the work:  Objectivity transformed into Subjectivity, but not merely as an intellectual exercise. Dibbets turns the understanding that the camera doesn�t lie completely on its head with a completely honest approach.  These photographs tell the most beautiful and seductive lies and as such they make a complete transformation that is both intellectual and emotional.  Because he gives attention to both the mind and senses Dibbets succeeds more completely as a conceptual artist then many others who choose to focus only on the cerebral in their art.

Dibbets the minimalist may be a bit harder to find in these works, perhaps due to the already mentioned seductive nature of his color and surfaces. He pares his work back to the essentials of employing reductive color and line to define form. But his minimalism is not of the starkly reductive variety. Seen from afar the color studies are particularly effective in upholding the classic statement that �less is more�.  And how much more!  Dibbets scales back the context of the familiar subject matter to the fundamentals. This manages to open a vast new visual world as defined by just a few elements.  His mastery lies within his contradictory manipulation and restricting of a view in order to expand it Beyond the car hood photos, Dibbets is equally effective with other subject matter such as his Water Structure piece. Here he combines several views of water in a linear reductive format that offers a conceptual look at time and space in a work that is as beautifully appealing as a small impressionist painting.  In other work the conceptual aspects are pushed harder but in all cases he does not lose focus on the esthetic elements of the work.

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Natalie Edgar / Woodward Gallery, 476 Broome Street / February 22

We reviewed Natalie Edgar�s exhibition of her oil paintings at Woodward gallery in November 1999 and subsequently followed up with an Artist Profile of her work (Abstract Art Online, April 2000).  In her current show Edgar has populated the gallery walls entirely with watercolors.  Each is of a rather intimate size and alternately presents a traditional handling of the media or offers a more radical approach.  In either case the results are stunning.

All of these paintings were produced over the past summer at Edgar�s Italian mountain residence in Pietrasanta.  In some of the work you see direct references to the precipitous terrain but most of these works equally reflect the artist�s emotional response to the environment, an interior landscape sensibility. In less capable hands such a notion might present something too dominatingly personal to translate into objective painting.  Not so here, for this artist is too knowledgeable a painter for that to happen.  In this work you receive the artist�s heartfelt and intimate expression of place references equally informed by a healthy dose of abstraction to allow for your own interpretations. 

Each piece is titled �Mountain Rhythm� followed by a number, which is far more satisfactory than the common �Untitled� designation.  That�s because the artist establishes just enough subject matter context to afford an entry point into the work.  Beyond that, you are blessedly on your own to determine the content and Edgar serves up a variety of possibilities. For example, consider the sentient quality of the forms.  In reality mountains are enormous static objects but in her paintings Edgar animates their forms and so, visually, they sing to us in their implied motion.  The paintings offer an alternative view to the static realism in releasing a sense of motion through color and indetermination of form.

In a painter�s world where working on paper does not often carry a great deal of currency, it is a brave thing to exhibit a show exclusively of watercolors.  Yet, these paintings easily hold their own against any work on canvas.  Edgar is purposeful in her choice of the media as evidenced in the unapologetically bold manner in which it is  handled. Two signature elements particularly stand out: her liberal use of the color black in many of the pieces and the addition of graphite lines.  The former imparts a component of depth, mystery and gravity to the work while the latter offers a supporting skein of structure for the large blotches of color.  Beyond the formal elements these works are breathtaking in their beauty and capacity to tickle the senses.  The color is so delicious you can almost taste it; the forms are so set in motion that you nearly feel a wind blowing over them.

In the end, this work is most intriguing for the hyper-reality Edgar creates due in no small part to the medium. You gaze at these paintings and absorb the sublime essence of the places they refer to.  They transport you into the mountains around Pietrasanta in a way not possible through photography or, for that matter, through actual experience.  This is a major feature of their content and Edgar is supremely masterful in exploiting it: the ability to present a sensory depiction of a real place in an extraordinarily unreal way.

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