“Museum” is a new downtown gallery run by artists. Its second show, NER1212 (a way of dialing the time) included work by ten showing their work for the first time. Two artists’ work caught my eye. Allen Bermowitz built a small pile of light with old, clear-glass bulbs, elegant found-objects spilled nicely into a radiant hill. Painter Arlene Schloss celebrates simply but hauntingly the mystery of pregnancy. Her women are flat, vague, weightless figures, but each huge belly pushes a section of the painting’s lower edge down below the expected rim, a formal belligerence in fine contrast to the shadowy drawing above. Other artists in the exhibition included Robert Harris who showed free hanging works in clear plexiglass (ground) and auto enamel colors (figure), Sharon Brant, who showed a sensitively executed stain painting, and Warren Davis, Anne Heimann, Ted Hughes, Ray Kelly, Paul Liebegott and Gary Smith.
—Jean-Louis Bourgeois
