Lee Krasner / Mural Studies at Robert Miller Gallery, 524 West 26 St. / December 22

This jewel of a show is so easy to access and will be around for plenty of time that there is no reason to miss it.  Just walk west on 26th Street (other side of 10th ave) until you see the Robert Miller gallery on your left and there, in some of the front windows, you�ll see these paintings. All of the work is composed of gouache on paper or board and once you move beyond the palpable observations that Gorky, Mondrian and others are influences, you quickly become aware of the genius present here.  Take note, for example, that for such diminutive paintings they still manage to pack a visual wallop.  They effectively wear a dual identity; on one hand functioning as studies for larger works, and on the other as wholly completed pieces in and of themselves.  As studies you look at them and can easily imagine how they would exist twenty times larger as fully executed murals.  But do a second take and enjoy them for the tough little paintings they are.

These pieces were completed between 1940 and 1943 and are based on Krasner�s work with Hans Hoffman at the Hoffman school.  Perhaps because of this, rather than in spite of it, they radiate a playful, optimistic quality as evidenced by the bright colors and skipping forms.  This was prior to her later involvement with Jackson Pollock with all its accompanying difficulties in allowing her to assert a personal style. Here the creativity is uninhibited and you see it throughout this work, especially when she is unafraid to reference her influences. While she does welcome those influences, it is clear that she nevertheless listens to herself as the most important voice.  That�s why these delightful small works are not merely re-hashings of other�s styles but are purely and candidly her own.

Krasner was in complete control of her medium, which means knowing when to relinquish control.  The forms are loose, animated and fun even while they are confidently placed.  Ditto with the color where the proportions of hue, value and chroma are just right.  They may appear dashed off without effort but a closer view indicates the structured arrangement of all the formal elements.  Gouache is an ideal medium for what this work was intended to be.  And here, some 60 years later, these �studies� are so fresh and alive as to have seemingly been painted just recently.  As with the Ray Parker show reviewed here in November (see the Midtown Reviews), this work demonstrates yet again the unique power and vitality of painting.

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June Leaf at Edward Thorpe Gallery, 210 11 Ave / December 22

One of the first things to strike you about this exhibition is how somber it is. The colors are knocked back; the paint handling is very loose and romantically wistful in a dark way.  Then too, the canvases are crude, purposefully warped and out of true. This work might simply qualify as disturbing except that a closer look reveals a whole lot more.  Start with the whimsical lyricism they possess.  Leaf creates a world of dreams, a personal surrealism that has a lot in common with the work of our featured artist for December, Travis Molkenbur (See the Artist Profiles).  But her paintings straddle figuration and painterly abstraction in such a way that makes it difficult to singularly characterize the work from either perspective.  It�s not an easy task but this artist seems to accomplish this effortlessly, if unevenly.  The unevenness should not be understood pejoratively here. Some paintings are much more figurative than abstract and vice versa, which creates a richness of variety rather than a competition.

Something else amazing about this work is that they are acrylics yet project the honest grit and feel of oils.  None of the plastic, artificial quality one traditionally attributes to acrylics is evident in these canvases. The paint is layered on so as to construct the color: clouds of white fade into clouds of blue, which fade into� etc. The indefinite color and paint handling also informs the mood of the work while providing spatial depth.  The latter functions as deep space for figures placed in the foreground or in creating a sense of landscape while simultaneously keeping the paint up front and near the surface.  From this particular point of view, Leaf has apparently absorbed some lessons from Cezanne.

This is one large eclectic show that comfortably inhabits the space in Edward Thorpe�s new cavernous Chelsea gallery.  The artist has included some metal sculptures, which coincide well with the general mood of the paintings.  But it is the two-dimensional work that commands presence in this exhibition.  Some paintings are more successful than others and, as pointed out, some are more or less abstract or, similarly, figurative. The dimensions of the paintings also vary a great deal. In the end, all of this implies a potential weakness, a watering down of the comprehensive effect of the exhibition by scattering in too much diversity. But actually it all speaks to how much of a real artist June Leaf is in the fact that we have the privileged view of witnessing the incredible range of her talent.  She is not afraid to put a lot out there for evaluation, some of which you may love or not, but does so without being exhaustingly excessive.  In the end it is the entire show that leaves an impression on you no matter how much you may prefer one piece or group of paintings to anot

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Mimmo Rotella at Charles Cowles gallery, 74 Grand Street / December 4

This exhibition is entitled Fashion and Flowers and the work presents a clear delineation between them in the two different approaches taken to each subject. The one similarity between both types of work is found in a process of reduction decollage.  This entails layering commercial posters and advertisements then tearing away at the surfaces to reveal the layers below. Rotella has been using this approach for some time, actually since the 1950s.  The torn portions either float on top of the imagery or establish an uneasy integration with it. Of the dual focus, the Fashion side is problematic and not as interesting as the Flowers portion of the work.

Lets begin with problematic.

The majority of the Fashion pieces consist of recognizable fashion images torn and with a single word applied in paint that redundantly describes the image.  At first you are struck by their shocking, violated quality.  The subject matter appears to open a wide variety of readings: the glorification of  fleeting youth, the defacing and/or countering of beauty, a violent (literally) clawing protest at the very notion of fashion, and with the addition of single words, the banality of fashion and its resident temporality.

There is plenty of content here for anyone interested in these sorts of issues but it wears thin after a while. You quickly get the point(s) and wonder how many times you need to see it played out in the work.  True, the words and imagery change from one piece to another.  But after a while the words weigh down the meaning like a lead anchor on a hot air balloon.  You can�t sidestep their presence and, ultimately, verbal associations.  They tend to get completely in the way as distractions to where this work might otherwise go.In a review by David Ebony from Artnet.com, a great deal is made about how this show, in coinciding with the Armani installation at the Guggenheim, serves as a critique to the merger between fashion and art.  The coincidence is of interest but so what?  Why give any credence to that tiresome issue through the art itself?  If that is Rotella�s intent, he would better serve it by dumping the images and writing more words, a lot more enough to construct a published piece about it.  On the other hand, if the work is meant to do that but accommodate additional directions, his flower pieces are far more successful.

Look at the flowers and you notice they are refreshingly unencumbered by the issues mentioned above.  Rather then reacting to the commercial imagery solely as a critique, Rotella instead appropriates and turns it toward his own ends. The results are stunning and the content is expanded upon; that hot balloon mentioned earlier has been cut free of the critique tether and is drifting off where it will and taking the viewer along for the ride. Rotella�s process of tearing the paper integrates and conflicts with the imagery so that a wider range of expression is set loose. The beauty of the images emerge once divorced from their original context.  From this point of view they become bright beautiful abstracts with the torn portions providing lyricism and a healthy dose of conflict to the otherwise pristine images.  You are far more engaged by this work because it isn�t weighed down by the freight of an overt and singular theme.

An interesting thing happens here in that the flower pieces ultimately become a better critique over the fashion pieces, mostly because they work as art first.  Rather then creating a frontal confrontation that cedes a disproportionate amount of importance to the issue, they are instead blithely dismissive of it.  The result is to effectively reveal the superfluous nature of the issue in the subtler act of creating imagery that is farther-reaching and of greater significance.

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Keith Long at OK Harris gallery, 383 West Broadway / December 4

These marvelous wall sculptures elicit all sorts of references: primitive cultures, sacred objects, anthropomorphic allusions and a cartoon-like innocence.  Yes, it�s all there but all at once and this is significant because this work could otherwise devolve into a one-track idea.  What provides a great deal of interest is the manner in which the different aspects compete and conflict with each other.  Just when you have the sense of looking at an ancient sacred totem something in the work might also strike you as funny.  Or perhaps you see an animal or human reference but are distracted by the seduction of the materials and how they are handled.  Needless to say, there is a great deal of magic in these pieces due in no small part to their ability to keep their meaning in flux.

Putting aside the varied references and content for a moment, take another look at how they are constructed.  This work is simply beautiful, which is primarily due to the materials themselves.  They appear to be constructed from found pieces of wood a lot of it looks like driftwood. Long manipulates the materials just enough so that they are pushed along in the direction he wants them to go without compromising their found quality.  As an artist, his real creative work occurs in the way he selects the wood, arranges and constructs these pieces. The approach has certain ties to photography.  Think of how a photographer selects a particular view or arranges objects, photographs them and then further manipulates the imagery in the printing process.

In the end the artist creates a very unique world in his own image.  It is a very physical world, rough and crude, but one that is within human scale and proportions. This latter characteristic is crucial in assisting the viewer with connecting to the work.  The materials, how they are handled and the forms they take conspire to create art that invites the viewer participate.  Still, because the work is as open as it is you are able to form an intimate interpretation of their meaning and this becomes your own special doorway into Long�s world.