print September 1991

Rona Pondick

In Rona Pondick’s edgy and frequently funny new works, the body seems to speak from every pore. Hoping to bridge the duality of the psychic and the physical, Pondick readdresses the born-to-die body we all live in, as both the house of our flesh and home to our dreams and fears. The image we thought we knew is dismembered and disfigured, offering palpable psychological resonances that reconcile visible and invisible worlds.

Reconciliation takes formal as well as ideational forms in Pondick’s work, as diverse styles converge. Her voice is rooted in Surrealism, and the urge to unite distinct

print Summer 1991

Ron Klein

Ron Klein’s sculpture synthesizes two sensibilities; a Surrealist practice of combining unrelated objects organizes itself in Minimalist formats. The exhibition title, “Ouroboros,” borrowed from a turn-of-the-century book by Garet Garrett entitled Ouroboros or the Extension of Mankind, refers to a legendary snake that swallows its own tail. The symbol represents man’s wish to gain possession of the objects of his desire through magical means. To this end—and this is of particular interest to Klein—the book discusses man’s invention of the machine. Two subtitles—“Magie Noire” (Black magic), for

print May 1991

Emily Cheng

Emily Cheng photographically reproduces images from Renaissance paintings on linen and then layers the black and white grounds with her own painted additions. In the six oil paintings in this exhibition, Cheng very nearly obliterates the photographic image, and the portions that remain are intended to serve as clues to her own painted marks. Along with transparent washes, the artist creates abstract forms that frequently suggest puzzle pieces.

The complexity of the relationships between these formal elaborations begins to create a dialogue about pictorial language itself, suggesting that Cheng

print February 1991

Francesco Clemente

A lot has been written about Francesco Clemente’s reliance on the self-portrait as a primary vehicle of expression and, in this exhibition of 20 years of work on paper, it is clearly the image with the greatest staying power. The 125 pieces displayed here explore a wide range of media and announce the artist’s facility in more than one. Yet, with all of their diversity, they manage to make significant, individual statements, exceeding the category of preliminary studies. It seems apparent that this is work about the self but not in the obvious, narcissistic sense that the overwhelming number of

print December 1990

Jim Lutes

Jim Lutes’ painted imagery—empty beer cans, cigarette butts, Fritos bags, and TV sets—initially seems hardly worth celebrating. What keeps us from turning away from a world we know all too well is the sense of humor and subtle formal intelligence his paintings reveal. Even in a painting as thickly populated with everyday debris as The Spot, 1989, the specificity of the images gives way to the power of paint and to a range of suggestive implications. In Sobriety, 1990, the autonomy of the paint is taken a step further; a large blob of painted marks enters a room, empty except for a single chair,

print September 1990

Joseph Sudek

This comprehensive exhibition of the work of Czechoslovakian photographer Joseph Sudek presents a selection of images dating from his youthful experiments of 1911 to his last photographs of 1976, the year of his death. The experience of Sudek’s work, represented here by more than 200 black and white photographs and several books, is heavily inflected by curator Michael Hoffman’s installation choices. On the entry wall, a biographical quote from Hoffman’s catalogue preface identifies Sudek’s general affinities with the landscape of his native country. One is particularly struck by the fact that

print April 1990

Gerald Nichols

The paintings in this exhibition mark a clear shift from Gerald Nichols’ constructed pieces and installations of the last ten years. In the late ’60s and ’70s, Nichols’ paintings relied on a formalist vocabulary, exploring a controlled range of ideas; content was defined by the accumulation of subtle gestures and the relationships they established within a rigid format. In the constructed pieces of the ’80s, relieflike wooden cutout structures were informed by the narrative as well as the formal content of such artists as Albert Pinkham Ryder and Winslow Homer.

In this exhibition of new paintings,

print March 1990

Bill Walton

Drawn from his experiences in nature, Bill Walton’s work reveals an idea of landscape as immediate as the ground underfoot, while remaining partial to that which is mysterious and unnameable. In this installation, called Seven or Eight More Places, 1989, Walton brings a refined sense of attention and consideration to place and materials, reducing his experience to a set of visual equivalents which he arranges and adjusts like the words of a sentence, shifting the syntax to correspond to the particular demands of each piece. The subtle accumulation of information animates most of his objects; in

print January 1990

Georg Herold

Georg Herold’s work describes a world where uncertainty is certain and meaning is hard to nail down, a world where the artist, by his sheer persistence and good humor, is the one who can (barely) hold it all together. Herold has strong ties to his own cultural and esthetic heritage, particularly to Joseph Beuys and to Sigmar Polke. Beuys’ legacy was the poetry of the material world; Polke provided the humor with which to approach it. In addition, Stephen Ellis makes a convincing case for the bearing Herold’s East German origins have on his work, accounting for what is elusive and cautious in

print November 1989

Ray Metzker

In the 36 photographs from the “Earthly Delights” series, 1986–88, Ray Metzker is face to face with the landscape, with the thick of twisted branches where underbrush and overgrowth prevail. Primarily known as a photographer of cities—their architecture and people—Metzker lyrically addresses this rural subject with a new use of light, the element that has always been the strongest in his formal vocabulary. In nearly half of these photographs, light bears the greatest influence on the image and provides the viewer with an unexpected idea of the landscape. These woods are aglow. Even before the

print September 1989

“Investigations 1989”

This exhibition featuring the work of Allan Wexler, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Martin Kippenberger explores the artists’ relationships to things in the world, and the diverse forms of attention they bring to these relationships. In his picnic area proposals for a specific site in Massachusetts, Wexler focuses on tables and chairs as both necessary and poetic extensions of ourselves. Included in this installation are 30 models, showing objects that shape the landscape, as in Two Chairs Carving a Path; that exert influences over others, as in Chairs in One Building Controlled by Chairs in Another, or

print Summer 1989

Larry Day

Larry Day’s paintings rely on a belief in the language of painting and the possibility that, despite its ever changing position in the contemporary art world, it may continue to speak with significance. While the viewer initially experiences a variety of architectural exteriors as the obvious subject of these paintings, it is Day’s particular sensibility taking on the tradition of painting that constitutes the real content of his work. Representation becomes a vehicle for more abstract concerns. In The Red Building, 1988, the general configuration of the exteriors—the size and scale of the parts

Eileen Neff