print Summer 1991

Colin Thomson

In Colin Thomson’s intensely exuberant painterly world, the elegance and austerity of ’50s high abstraction confronts the gaudy colors and whimsical shapes of its old arch-rivals, design and decor. What, Thomson seems to ask, can serious painting do with Avocado, Tangerine, and Harvest Gold?

Thomson’s color schemes (like his forms) are consistent from painting to painting, and their cumulative effect is dazzling, like stepping off a plane into bright Florida sunshine. His shapes—a large private vocabulary of forms and references—seem almost hieroglyphic. While they are not easily deciphered, one

print Summer 1991

Collier Schorr

Collier Schorr’s haunting and nasty debut show expresses the relationship many of us have to its subject, childhood. Schorr’s installation reminds the viewer that childhood is frequently more troubled, and for that reason troublesome to remember, than the never-never land represented in picture books and photo albums suggests. Though forever behind us, it remains a puzzling constellation of memories that animates our adult lives.

On one wall, enlarged color photographs of black and white prints from a photo album (toddlers in backyards or on the beach) are randomly overlaid with line illustrations

print May 1991

Jeff Perrone

Jeff Perrone’s glazed clay tiles mounted directly on the gallery walls, in groups that form geometric configurations—a reverse L, a diamond, an inverted triangle—combine a delicate painterly technique with the exacting science of ceramics. Their coloristic intensity and brilliance is mesmerizing, and though the exhibition is rife with historical allusions to Persian and Indian miniatures, as well as quotations from artists ranging from Delacroix to Frank Stella and Bruce Nauman, the artist’s touch is refreshingly light.

Perrone’s current show has rendered superfluous previous criticism by ceramists

print May 1991

John Bowman

Painting on wooden doors, either singly or in pairs, John Bowman apparently finds inspiration in the grain itself. Through insubstantial applications of paint—sometimes just a series of dots—he conjures entire landscapes with a remarkable range of atmospheric qualities. He can do this because the surface itself serves as a portal; the eye travels both across and through these doors, and paint is the handle that opens them up.

But the real poetry in these “paintings”—and one uses the word cautiously, because at his best Bowman’s touch is very light—is the way the unpainted surface is allowed to

print April 1991

Duncan Hannah

Duncan Hannah’s paintings are proof that if representational art is not dead, it is, at least in this incarnation, so diffident as to invite healthy skepticism. Though these works are heavy on narrative and atmosphere, like the best sort of houseguest, each seems content to withdraw gracefully into the background. Despite their mild demeanor, however, these paintings are far from dull. In fact, they are even disturbing in a whispery sort of way. If in the end one isn’t quite convinced of their brilliance, at least they make a palpable impression.

As perhaps befits an artist who deals quite

print March 1991

McDermott and McGough

McDermott and McGough’s latest installment of what seems to be a lifelong project—reassessing or commenting upon the present by conjuring up campy versions of an imaginary past—is concerned once again with matters of form. These works, like the resplendent dandyism of McDermott and McGough’s public personae (the couple are often seen about town in full Edwardian attire), invite viewers to ponder the question of appearance, vivifying the Wildean valorization of style over substance and form over content.

The first eight drawings encountered upon entering the gallery resemble either 19th-century

print January 1991

Susan Silas

This show of Susan Silas’ work presents us with something rare: art that is funny. Yet the work is also thoughtful, and the questions it provokes remain in mind long after the laughter fades. The exhibition begins with a piece (also illustrated on the postcard/invitation) that confronts through self-mockery: “Miss Silas,” the 55-by-58-inch oil on linen reads, “this is your lucky day.” Though this stylized self-deprecation is tinged with solipsism, perhaps it also bespeaks a larger awareness; this is clearly “art about art,” but it’s not the self-conscious nature of the rumination that surprises

print December 1990

Anish Kapoor

There’s a strange elegance to Anish Kapoor’s drawings: they’re at once troublingly obscure and masterfully finished. Kapoor is known primarily as a sculptor, and this show, which marks the first major exhibition of his drawings (a show of his works on paper also opened during the same month at the Tate Gallery in London), prompts one to ask what place they have in his larger oeuvre, and how impressive they would seem had the sculpture not preceded them. Less exploratory than one might expect, and very much works in their own right, the drawings elaborate themes introduced in Kapoor’s previous

print November 1990

Richard Ross

Richard Ross is no stranger to dusty corners and out-of-the-way places. Like his previous “Museology” series, which catalogued the strange world of museums, his new photographs again seek to capture the eerie, free-associative chaos created by casually jumbled inanimate objects lost in sepulchral space. This time, however, Ross has turned away from the rarified world of the museum and wandered into the dusty back lots of pop-culture Hollywood. A stuffed horse from Camelot starts at its reflection in the mirror; the flying saucer from My Favorite Martian sits propped beside a hot-dog cart in a

Justin Spring