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Adela Leibowitz at the OK Harris Gallery,
383 West Broadway to January 17th
To view a film clip of the exhibition click here.
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In the press release for her exhibition entitled �Nowhere Paintings� Adela Leibowitz claims that her paintings �were inspired by the manipulative conventions of the gothic, proto-slasher films of the �70s� the viewer is positioned as that stranger on the verge of being scared to death. Privileged detachment is about to be undone�. Okay� I�ll admit that they are creepy paintings; especially after encountering a roomful of them. And the heavy psychological (or should that be �psycho�?) reading is the starting point for this work. The imagery projects a suffocating quality of anxiety (actually, for those of us with somewhat humble roots in the northern Minnesota woods, these paintings uncomfortably recall the horrors of mid-winter when Spring seemed like a laughable possibility or a horrible tease). But do they go beyond trying to scare the pants off you and is that enough? |
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The interesting thing about art is that it often refuses to the stay within the confines of what the artist is explicitly attempting to express. Paintings, abstract paintings in particular, have an interesting habit of taking on a life of their own and thus |
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Adela Leibowitz, Struwwelpeter Road, 2001 -2002, gouache and acrylic, 40 x 60 in |
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opening up their meaning. And such is the case here. The imagery is so reduced to patterns of black and white that it tends to get lost or disappear for awhile. The extremes of contrast are given equal weight even as their proportions change from one painting to another. Leibowitz |
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Adela Leibowitz, Suddenly Everything Was Different, 2001 -2002, gouache and acrylic, 40 x 56 in |
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achieves this by eliminating all gradation except as occasionally defined by thick foliage such as with the tops of the trees in the upper portion of Struwwelpeter Road. But more often figure and ground get reversed (look at the detail to Right Back Where We Started From for a prime example). |
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Adela Leibowitz, Right Back Where We Started From, 2001 -2002, gouache and acrylic, 40 x 54 in |
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Adela Leibowitz, Right Back Where We Started From, (detail) |
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