This show includes recent paintings and wall reliefs. The latter are constructed of natural bone and hydra stone, a refined cement. The wall reliefs, elaborately conceived, are somewhat ponderous, lacking a sense of direction, as if the artist were searching for something that she has not yet found. This feeling is also present in the paintings which for the most part are heavy and redundant. The subject matter of the pictures, some of which are part collage, seemingly reflects a prehistoric age, especially in the large canvas Earth Eyes which is like some strange organic growth of an antediluvian nature. Of her “Landscape” series, No. 6, a meeting of sky and sea with deep reflections is one of the best, and of her series called “Fragments,” No. 2 is more fully realized, though one feels even here that Helen Pashgian is more sculptor than painter, and that as an artist she might find her greatest fulfillment in that area.
––Estelle Kurzen
