print Summer 1980

Ernest Trova

The protagonists in Ernest Trova’s “Falling Man Series” were highly polished metal mannequins moving resignedly through a programmed journey into oblivion. In the new “Poet/Table Figure Series,” the protagonists have assumed a radically different form though they act out a similar theme. Like the image of the “falling man,” the small pocky sheet metal silhouettes in this new series (which have been welded singly or paired inside various architectural stage settings), are likewise caught in an artificial, delimiting system. The major difference between the two series lies in the gestural, spatial

print May 1980

Irene Krugman

In my ceaseless struggles with arithmetic, I remember having tremendous difficulty assessing the value of proportions. However arranged, numbers to me were flat, singular descriptions of who was older, who was bigger, and what was more. Though my senses knew to opt for 1/2 of a candy bar over 1/4, written on a piece of paper, 1/4, having the largest integer as its denominator, seemed to be the larger measure. I was clearly not a pro at this relational game.

Graduated images on a plane will be read by our eyes as receding because we have been subliminally taught to translate the illusion into the

print May 1980

Rachel Bas-Cohain

Rachel Bas-Cohain is also involved with the mechanics of sight and perception. Her interests center around the limitations of perception and how they affect our experience of art.

The farthest view upon which we can still focus is usually our optical aspiration, so to speak, but bas-Cohain points out that it should not necessarily be our desired resting place. The rear 50 feet of the gallery space are separated by two floor-to-ceiling pieces of cheesecloth which are connected by 20 differently angled cloth cylinders. The quotations printed on the back wall of the gallery, all of which have

print April 1980

“Marking Black”

Exhibitions using a single feature as a basis for cohesion often never gain the added dimension which comes from going beyond preordained connections. “Marking Black,” is distinctively not that kind of show although all the artists represented have been brought together because of their present involvement with black.

The thesis of curators Jeanette Ingberman and Madeleine Burnside is that just as the “black” paintings of Rauschenberg, Rothko, Stella and Reinhardt self-consciously marked the end of “modernist” painting, so the black works in the current scene have decidedly utilized the same line

print February 1980

Christopher Knowles

In this season when galleries are showing bring-it-home-with-you art, packaged in form and price for gift-giving, a difficult and unmarketable show is welcome, but the work of CHRISTOPHER KNOWLES at Holly Solomon brings with it greater moral difficulties than esthetic ones. The mythology surrounding Knowles is all too well documented: an autistic child, Knowles’ “creative genius” was hailed by avant-garde artists (in particular playwright and director, Robert Wilson); he has been used in their work ever since. One begins to wonder whether the commercialization of an individual is not worse than

print January 1980

Conrad Atkinson and Victor Burgin

I have always found the mixture of art and social purpose to be like a "lady’s drink”—the marriage of the sweet and the bitter, an appealing, tasteful presentation of that which if consumed undiluted and without the little paper-umbrella swizzle stick, would disturb and shake you. It was with this bias that I went to see the work of Conrad Atkinson and Victor Burgin, both of which defy categorization; they can be seen as political protest, sociology, anthropology and/or art.

An interesting counterpoint is set up between Atkinson and Burgin, each with his individual approach to that juncture

print January 1980

Ed Kerns

Ed Kerns’ work over the past few years has been characterized by a brutal, perhaps primitive approach to the canvas. Again, in his latest paintings, he gashes and sutures the canvas plane, at once destroying and reclaiming its surface. That fine line separating pain and penance in Judeo-Christianity has for Kerns always been the esthetic struggle between the additive and the subtractive, the perpetual seesawing between ritualistically inflicting paint and form upon a canvas and absolving it.

In the new work, having already mastered the manipulation of his layered and “darned” surfaces as well as

print September 1979

Karen Shaw

In some languages, letters and numbers are housed in the same alphabet, offering the possibility of interchanging their functions. Gematria, the Hebrew science of cryptography, holds that the hidden meaning of a word is released through assigning significance to its numerical value. Karen Shaw uses numbers and letters as her medium, assembling, dismantling, assigning value to the valueless and unquantifiable; words, numbers, from poems, ticket stubs, supermarket receipts, become content of her art. Using the reflexive relationship between letters and numbers, Shaw constructs equations composed

print February 1978

Roberta Allen

The French word for symbolist is déformateur. Signs and symbols cannot stand for and house meaning simultaneously without causing some “deformity” in the movement from idea to representation to popular conception. Roberta Allen examines conventional signs and symbols such as Xes and arrows in an attempt to expose our assumptions as being based on learned cultural codes rather than on perceptual information.

The P.S.1 exhibition titled “One As Two & More: Ascending & Descending Arrows” is an installation of 12 white masking-tape arrows stuck to the floor, each pointed in a different direction.

print February 1978

Natalie Bieser

Natalie Bieser has in the past constructed wall pieces made from various materials such as beads and thread. Her concerns in those works—line, gravity, light reflection and lyrical form—are transferred to the two-dimensional format in her recent exhibition of paintings and watercolors.

Bieser’s paintings are basically compartmentalized areas of low hues of gray, mauve and white separated into sections by a build-up of paint forming tactile ridges. Similarly, the watercolors have overlapping washes of color, which create the characteristic ridges of line. This calling attention to edges is Cubist

print January 1978

Joyce Kozloff

Using assorted techniques (lithography, collage, painting on canvas, drawing on paper) and assorted materials (silk, paper, paint, crayons, oil markers, colored pencils) Joyce Kozloff puts Islamic and other traditional decorative motifs through their paces. The eloquence of the resulting patterns comes from her instinctive alternation of stimulation and repose, of near confusion and clarity.

The most fascinating thing about pattern-making is that the artist’s mental inner workings are visible. Rhythm and color decisions have to be made within a given framework. Kozloff adds another level to this

print January 1978

Susan Weil

Susan Weil’s work with mixed inks on rag paper explores the movement and change in natural elements, time and light of day. The horizon line, which is present in all the works, defines them as landscapes. The passage of time is described in transmutations of tone intensity and through physical processes inflicted on the paper, such as crumpling, folding and tearing.

There are three series which, when read sequentially, move us in small and large leaps from one state of day/nightlight to another. Onset and Sequens each have a succession of four sheets of paper from which a triangular section has

Judith Lopes Cardozo