The big news about Geoffrey Dorfman�s new paintings compared to his last exhibition in this gallery (October 2003) is the addition of full bodied color.  Considering his assertive use and exploration of gray in the past, this marks no small change. Of course, the gray was self-possessed of color too, albeit in very sublime variations. But here the color matches the sensual paint handling that has always informed his work.  That said most of these pieces include the signature moody somberness that was featured in the previous body of work. The color plays quite well into this aspect but also personalizes the emotion unlike the gray paintings which maintained a slight detached quality.

Dorfman�s work is completely about the act of painting: the forms, the rendering (such as it is) and the space, all of it is experientially revealed.  If any of these pieces were pre-conceived they disguise the fact very well. Forms in particular function rather like �discovered� abstract artifacts

Geoffrey Dorfman at the Painting Center

Geoffrey Dorfman at the Painting Center

that appear half submerged within the paint.  In as much as you are compelled to look at the forms the atmospheric quality of the paint hand- ling equally demands your attention.  Indeed, this even-handed emphasis serves as both subject matter and content for the work. Form and space dissolve into one and the same thing but manifest and even reverse themselves in different ways.

For example, what at one moment appears as green, grey and blue forms in a field of red, in another may suggest a partially revealed and underlying picture plane.  In the latter circumstance the red reverses moving from background to foreground. Yet in the inverse role of an object, that same red is rather restless as it undulates with its own atmospheric quality. In such a circumstance no definitive hue emerges but rather a blended collection of deep crimson tones is proffered. The lingering question is which ultimately defines the forms, the smaller cool shapes or the sea of red? There is no decisive answer which is precisely what Dorfman seems to be after as a subtext to his paintings - a perpetually unresolved conundrum.