Eric Amouyal / Donahue & Soshinski Art, 560 Broadway # 304 / September 29

The paintings in this show radiate a visual intensity from the walls so that the number of paintings included is just right. Any more work and you might be blinded to the overall effect. The colors are brash but it�s the varied and intense patterns that make them glow.  Needless to say, some time is required to get comfortable with this work.  However, once you�ve done so, the experience is rewarding as you tap into the rhythmic visual motion generated by this show.  Indeed, this appears to be a major part of the content of these pieces - that and the concept of process by which they are created.  The latter is comprised of two parts.  The first consists of the artist creating several patterned panels in categories of sizes.  In a sense it is a combination of picture making and gathering raw material.  The second part is to mix and match the panels until a satisfactory result is produced.  In a way this is conceptually related to how composition works in photography.

Prior to this show, Amouyal worked exclusively with monochromatic panels.  This work is in complete opposition to that, but interestingly, two of the more successful pieces combine the older, monochromatic panels with the new garish ones.  This produces a refreshing mix and you become aware of the unmitigated power of gray to contain brighter colors like water damping down a fire.The larger pieces do not work so well, in part, because there are fewer panels and a lesser variety of proportion.  In the largest work, four of the same size are lined up side by side across the wall, which forces a left to right reading of the work and vice versa.  Another problem with the larger size is that, the bigger the panels, the more they become individually encompassing environments.  The rhythmic play between the differently sized and painted panels becomes diffused. These pieces work best when the proportions are varied and the complexity becomes more diverse.

What of content beyond the gyrations of patterns and color?  Well, the painted forms immediately bring to mind microorganisms or ferns.  This suggestion of nature combines quite nicely with the process by which the work is produced.  A certain random/order prevails in them.  At first they appear to be disjunctive as the panels fight each other to dominate the viewers attention.  But while the latter takes place an overall buzz is simultaneously created that injects a measure of harmony to the work.  Amouyal seems to be imitating, not illustrating, a view of how nature itself works: the pushing and pulling of chaos and order.


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Five, Kenneth Noland, Valerie Jaudon, Bruno Rousselot, Gwen Hardie & Rachel Howard / Lennon/Weinberg, 560 Broadway, Suite 308 / September 29

Now here is a show in which the comprehensive effect is far greater then any one individual�s painting(s).  Each artist has at least two pieces in the show and this allows both individual and group comparisons.  Five presents an interesting range of styles and approaches.  The paint is flatly dry or glossy and slick.  The color is bright or muted or monochromatic.  The mood is moody or playful, superficially inviting or coldly analytical. The artists come from various backgrounds; Kenneth Noland, the veteran abstract painter, and Valerie Jaudon hail from the south, Bruno Rousselot is French, Gwen Hardie is Scottish and Rachel Howard is English.  Their ages run from 76 (Noland) to 31 (Howard).  In short there is plenty of diversity operating here and the art plays off and to itself.

As to similarities, beyond being abstract, the paintings fall into a similar size range (large) and the forms have a rather straightforward, up-front sensibility.  You detect it even in Jaudon�s more complicated imagery, which nevertheless preserves symmetry through a proportionally balanced presentation.  You also sense that, shown in solo exhibitions, most of these paintings are probably serialized but here that is not possible.  For all the diversity of style etc, the show hangs together quite well in that no single artist�s work or style is allowed to dominate.

There is a strange combination of the modern and the post-modern in this show. For example, here is Kenneth Noland returning to his target images without, it seems, having missed a beat.  Early 60�s abstraction or retro-60s, post-modernism?  Rousselot�s and Howard�s work suggests a look back to painting from the late 60s to early 70s with or without irony.  Jaudon and Hardie seem to reprise the 80s and beyond. Is there a historical analysis of formalism at work here or are these artists simply and honestly engaged in painting this way? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe both or a portion thereof.  Whatever, the work is bold and emphatic and it is left to the viewer to draw conclusions.Where emotion is concerned it is proffered at arm�s length with the viewer kept at a distance. The imagery and how it is painted is most often sleek, stylized and unbothered by messy paint or emotions. Overall the emphasis of this show appears to be more formalist then anything else and is the undercurrent that connects these painters.

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Garner Tullis & Vadim Katnelson / Rosenberg + Kaufman, 115 Wooster St. / September 29

These two artists compliment each other in their strict and reductive adherence to the grid.  Another similarity is the manner in which both are involved with the tactile nature of their work.  Surface and texture are important to both though handled very differently.  Tullis is a sensualist in his use of encaustic layers that �capture� the forms within the paint.  Katznelson is obsessive in the way he �stitches� the paint onto the surface.  The effect in his work is like coarse cloth and it takes everything in you to not run your hand over the surface.

Tullis studied with several members of the The New York School including Motherwell, Rothko and Still.  He is best known as a printmaker having established the International Institute of Experimental Printmaking in 1972.  For all that, as a painter, he handles his materials quite well.  There is a measure of controlled chaos that is allowed to dance within his grid and so define the content of his work.  While the grid contains the forms, they rebel against this in the way in which their unevenness causes the whole picture plane to undulate.  Tullis challenges the grid, dares it even, to overtly contain or control the emotion he slathers on with his paint.

Katznelson�s work is more cerebral and conceptual in a Donald Judd sort of way.  But obsession also becomes part of the mix in the way he applies his paint.  Twisting and forcing the paint into place to create a tactile impasto skein of evenly controlled paint is how this is accomplished. No grid is drawn out ahead of time; the paint is simply applied down the long verticals and the grid thusdetermined.  The paintings vary in muted tones and size but their dimensions are consistently long. They offer a totem solemnity in their presence and you walk away with them affected by the painstaking process their creation involves.  This comprises the subject matter of Katznelson�s work and he does not allow anything, such as overt color or form variation to distract from it.  Still, it is amazing how much mileage he gets from his muted colors and, as objects, these paintings are beautiful and elegant.

This show is particularly interesting in combining these two artists for the contrasts and comparisons.  Tullis� work offers plenty of variety but Katznelson grounds the show with his slight variations. They share a reductive and tactile sensibility but their approaches are nevertheless widely diverse.


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Pat Passolof / Elizabeth Harris, 529 West 20th St. / September 25, 2000

Two sensations greet you upon entering the Elizabeth Harris gallery and addressing Pat Passlof�s work.  The first is the overt visual activity bombarding your retinas - plenty of color, surface, and busy patterned forms.  The second is subtler and takes a while to register. Then you denote a slightly sour aroma that is not at all unpleasant. It is the linseed oil in the paint that clings to these canvases and brings them into being.  Combine it all and you are in for a visual treat if you love painterly abstraction done in oils.

Passlof�s greatest strengths are in her use of color and surface.  The color treatment varies depending on the forms.  Where the forms are clearly delineated the color vibrates in the background or within the forms themselves.  Otherwise, in a painting such as Emerson, it is ingeniously mixed to produce combinations that do not lend themselves to singular definitions of hue. Some of these paintings are bright and dazzling but most contain subdued tones.  What�s important is that the range and variety demonstrate Passlof�s masterful color handling.

Her surfaces are simply and exquisitely painted and this contrasts with the rather large patterned aspect of her forms.  Each painting creates visual tension between the orderly forms and the loose way in which they�ve been painted.  This is the formal subject matter of the work, the manner in which order and chaos are brilliantly combined.  Yet it is the rawness of the surfaces and paint handling that humanizes the work making it approachable. It is much like experiencing the random orderliness of nature.  These are paintings that are more like engaging and familiar environments rather than merely artifice.

What of content?  Well it is interesting to note that the artist has titled them with author�s surnames or otherwise literary references.  And you sense a similar esthetic sensibility in a painting such as Nevermore to Poe�s The Raven.  But spending too much time sorting out these links to the imagery is to miss the visual feast these paintings serve up not to mention the point.  Whether the titles segue nicely or not with the imagery, the real content is about what is revealed and hidden in the art, visual and/or literary.  Take a painting like Washington Irving with its seven vertical lines buried in the paint.  Do they constitute the forms or is it really the eight shimmering bands of color that surround them?  What is hidden or revealed in this work or in a painting like Emerson?  The literary connection can be as literal as �reading between the lines� but simultaneously presents a purely visual experience. It is in within this contrast that great art resides; where titles serve as optional poetic starting points to otherwise engage the work.

The only thing wrong with this show is that there is a bit too much work.  The paintings tend to crowd the space and each other.  These are engaging and demanding works that require a significant amount of white space around them.  So the difficult question is which to leave in and which to take out?  Not an easy choice considering the quality of work presented here and ultimately a rather sweet dilemma.

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Barry Goldberg / Howard Scott, 529 West 20th St. / September 25, 2000

This show, at Howard Scott�s new Chelsea space, is the complete opposite of Pat Passlof.  The paintings are far less in number (notwithstanding a comparison of available wall space between the galleries), they are spare of form and color with a sensibility that is deliberate artifice.  It has been suggested that these works resemble abstract paintings from the 60s and 70s.  No doubt that is true.  But another take is to see them as retro Rothko�s; especially in such works as Sun Canyon and Lemon Up.  Look at them and you will see the same sweet color sense and skeins of painted surface that just barely cover something underneath.  But the forms are harder edged and the colors simply two-toned.  The paintings are also in direct opposition to the inviting warmth of Rothko, instead presenting a calculatedly cold, rather remote quality.

A number of contrasts are present in these works that help define their content.  There is the bright color that at first beckons but then is off-putting.  Next are the surfaces that at times suggest the translucency of skin but are reductive as to range and variety.  Another contrast is the forms, which offer a certain purposeful simplistic dumbness versus a starkly reductive figure/ground presentation.  It all adds up to authentic postmodern abstract painting.  One easily denotes references to earlier abstract painting from the 50s, 60s, 70s and, perhaps, even the 80s.  Yet like any postmodernist, Goldberg�s paintings are analytically distant.

This show is hung quite well with a breeziness of presentation that is reflected in the paintings themselves.  Because they are at such extremes it is an interesting exercise to compare Goldberg�s work with Passlof�s (the galleries are in the same building). You�ll find yourself bouncing between two extremely different worlds.