print September 1991

Mayer Spivack

Mayer Spivack’s quirky neo-Surrealist assemblages of found and fabricated objects track the development of this reclusive artist’s highly personal vision from 1954 to the present. The 14 sculptures presented here are divided for the purpose of this show into “Shrines” and “Golems.” The nine shrines physically and thematically resemble small altarpieces, while the five golems are totemic and idolized. All address issues of ritual and fetishism, and like the best works of H. C. Westermann, they play the anthropomorphic, the inanimate, and the organic off each other with a combination of wit and

print Summer 1991

Emmett McDermott

In Emmett McDermott’s clever and irreverent collages of popular media images, this post-Pop artist couples photomechanical and painterly techniques by collaging color Xerox enlargements of magazine photographs onto softly modulated translucent acrylic grounds. Every image is positioned within a larger square and is neatly punctuated with subtle, meticulously positioned rectangles that bespeak the artist’s sense of design. In McDermott’s precise collages, he laminates modified celebrity and advertising images taken from publications such as People, Time, and Vanity Fair, frequently coupled with

print May 1991

Yanick Lapuh

Yanick Lapuh makes his debut solo show with an impressive selection of ten abstract diptychs that consist of canvases mounted on wood. Lapuh is a master of illusion, employing diagrammatic variations based on the cube. Each diptych consists of panels of contrasting muted color, texture, and shape. In a number of works, the cube appears on the right panel as a series of precisely etched lines on a flat ground. This simple, geometric form is juxtaposed with a left panel, sometimes square and sometimes repeating the contours of the right portion, covered with strips of wood that protrude from the

print March 1991

Louise Lawler

For the second installment in the Museum of Fine Art’s ongoing “Connections” series, wherein various artists are invited to organize installations based on their personal selections from the institution’s collection, Louise Lawler chose to present a collection of thimbles and a selection of still-life paintings along with her own photographs and placards. With the assistance of museum curators, a staff photographer, and two NEA interns, Lawler mounted four room-size installations. Repainting the gallery walls pink, ivory, and white, she juxtaposed the various found objects with photographs and

print February 1991

Chuck Holtzman

In this exhibition, Chuck Holtzman has proved himself at home working on large-scale sculpture while maintaining the sense of finesse and miniaturist craftsmanship that characterized his tiny constructivist manipulations of hand-cut wood and accompanying charcoal drawings. Typically six feet in height and composed of at least 250 pieces of wood each, the four sculptures exhibited here consist of various geometric configurations of raw wood, touched in places with white spackle, acrylic, and charcoal pencil, and held together by screws and nails, which punctuate the saw-cut surfaces. Holtzman’s

print January 1991

Gregory Gillespie

The 28 meticulously crafted paintings, drawings, and monotypes that comprise Gregory Gillespie’s recent exhibition reveal the artist’s obsession with detail, trompe l’oeil illusionism, and haunting devotional symbolism. The majority of the works, created with oil and alkyd acrylic on board, employ old master techniques to achieve realistic effects. The smooth surfaces and precise contours in pieces such as Godmother Shrine, 1990, Portrait of Itchy, 1988, and Manger Scene, 1987–88, suggest Northern Renaissance painting, while the complexity of imagery and unusual juxtaposition of objects in

print December 1990

Ellen Banks

Ellen Banks’ most recent exploration of contemporary synesthesia consists of a series of “Improvisations” (all works 1990) in the form of minimalist grids derived from the piano and vocal scores of Johannes Brahms. Three small mixed-media works on paper, entitled “Waltzes,” feature horizontal grids of acrylic, the color and geometric structure of which are derived from Brahms’ Opus 39. Two artist’s books, or “Songbooks” containing 12 and 25 pages are based respectively on Brahams’ songs “Dein blaues Auge” (Your blue eye) and “Bei dir sind meine Gedanken” (My thoughts are with you). Each handmade

print November 1990

Marjorie Moore

Marjorie Moore investigates the duality of innocence and corruption in a series of canvases and works on paper that anthropomorphize real and fantasy animals. Along with 13 paintings and mixed-media assemblages, Moore presented a two-monitor, two-channel video installation, made in collaboration with videomaker Huey Coleman, dancer Nancy Salmon, and singer Miriam Barndt-Webb. Entitled Canis-Canis, 1987, the work juxtaposed images of a caged coyote and shots of the artist parading about, smothering herself in fur pelts. Two separate monitors were set on wooden dressers with drawers bursting open

print October 1990

Henry Schwartz

This 80-work retrospective of veteran Boston painter Henry Schwartz was the first comprehensive view of the artist’s forty-year career. Fantasies in oil, dating from 1951 to the present, combine absurdist wit with a poignant retrospective look at 19th- and 20th-century history. Music is the spiritual center of Schwartz’s expressionistic figurative art, which frequently takes the form of portraits of famous composers, writers, and philosophers. (Schwartz’s bespectacled self-portrait often appears in the company of his fantasy alter egos Mozart and Mahler.) Amply endowed nudes, cultural imagery,

print September 1990

Aaron Fink

This exhibition of 15 works marks the first show devoted entirely to Aaron Fink’s counterproofs. By laying paper down on wet painted canvas and pulling it off, Fink produces what he terms a “counter-image.” The works exhibited here contain Fink’s signature centered images of mundane subjects ranging from a hat to a candle flame to a bunch of hanging grapes. All of the works combine encrusted layers of paint with fluid areas of black ink to create rich, moody surfaces. Their subject is the tension between the illusion of the object and the physicality of the paint.

In Apple, 1990, a work that

print Summer 1990

Suzanne Vincent

In Suzanne Vincent’s recent exhibition, meticulous detail lends her familiar portraits and still lifes an eerie sense of metaphysical hyperreality. In a self-portrait, displayed in an antique-looking frame, entitled The Legend of St. Lucy I Can do it with my eyes Shut, 1990, Vincent portrays herself in a meditative pose, with hair cropped short in a monklike manner. As legend has it, St. Lucy plucked out her eyes in an act of martyrdom and she is often represented offering them in a dish. Here a heart-shaped amulet around the artist’s neck contains her open eye.

Vincent’s still lifes are collections

print April 1990

Darryl Zeltzer

Darryl Zeltzer’s recent showing of paintings balances East with West, Oriental mysticism with technology, figure with ground. These works were prompted by frequent visits to India, and they reveal a deep commitment to the environment, to natural materials, and to sacred imagery. Many of the pieces have been painted on handmade paper. In Flabellum, 1989, the central image is drawn in pencil, then covered with a mixture of tar, oil, and beeswax. The paper resembles vellum and is mounted on wood and framed in cold rolled steel. This contemporary ideograph can be read in a variety of ways: as a tree

Francine A. Koslow