R. G. Wholden

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  print March 1963

  Jack Zajac

  Recognizing the link between the sacrificial animal and the sacrificial human, Zajac is inspired by this sacred bond of indemnification and draws his subject matter from three kinds of offerings: the bound goat, the ram, and the deposition. He has varying success with each theme. The ram’s head is often treated too literally or ornamentally. But his preoccupation with the shapes of the ram’s horns may lead Zajac into enclosing space within his sculptures by an exploration of the possibilities of opening-out the form. The sculptor has discovered a fertile challenge to his achievements in the

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  print March 1963

  “Gallery Artists”

  Even the paintings in this collage-filled show give the effect of being pasted layers. Joan Brown’s slabbed oil of two nudes is even more stratified in feeling than her torn-paper study of the same subject. Brown’s weakness seems to be her virtue since the banality of form in both works makes for a powerful grossness. Emerson Woelffer’s flaws seem to be less fertile. Represented by many examples in this show, Woelffer demonstrates facility and a penchant for “instant painting.” Apparently he only adds water to a mix made in New York. The potential boldness of automatic painting is inhibited by

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  print March 1963

  John Grillo

  The expressive substance of these collages is a universe filled with moving particles which cannot collide. Enameled shelf-papers, wallpaper, braille imprints and magazine salvage are all included for pasting, but each surrenders its original identity in the matrix of form that Grillo imposes. His color scheme is dominated by yellow and white whose brightness he exploits to play man-made sunspots upon the viewer’s retina. And they do leave vivid after-images. Grillo displays a great capacity for spacial inventiveness in this series. Each collage is a new distribution of forms equally capable of

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  print March 1963

  “Gallery Artists”

  Derivative and mediocre work primarily concerned with eye-catching textural effects brings the objects in this exhibition close to the level of interior decorator’s accessories. The exhibitors do not risk enough of themselves in their work, making conspicuous the absence of that underlying seriousness which distinguishes paintings from ornamentation. Thompson makes bad sculpture out of portions of other men’s ideas. Simms creates what might properly be called a rectangular “smush” by adding sand to Easter-egg colored pigment and then applying it like icing to the canvas. Geoffrey masks the