Large oils that have origins in the artist’s recent drawings, deal with fanciful erotica and are executed with appropriate casualness. Loose clots of thick paint follow the paths of drawing, not imbedded into paint but left dry and vulnerable on the pristine white canvas. The result is an anti-painterly occupation of surfaces, a sense of things forced on a surface, rather than worked into it. This possibly adds bite to the perverse humor of his statement, but by becoming gigantic and embellished versions of the drawings, the paintings lose the intimate contact with the viewer and become more like coarse jokes. The drawings are inventive as always, their scale allows them to speak slyly rather than to shout, and whatever Altoon happens to want to say, they say better.
—Douglas McClellan
