The young Giovanni de Angelis is a sculptor but it is his ink and wash drawings that share exhibition space with Matt Kahn at the Raymond Burr Gallery. De Angelis, now twenty-four, has technical assurance. Coming from the island of Ischia, he borrows heavily from his Italian compatriot, Marino Marini, but even more heavily from Matisse. At least it is a rhythmic formalism that de Angelis uses to transform the lonely and desperate dancers and cavaliers of Marini into hedonistic images, relieves of their existential anxiety. Matt Kahn from Stanford is more closely related to the 19th century French tradition, deriving much of his technique from the pointillists. Usually applying carefully controlled strokes of color over a soft ground, Kahn arrives at a highly abstract although Impressionist-related image. At other times the pigment is held in relatively tight design patterns. His is a cautious intellectualism in contrast with the bravura of de Angelis.

—Constance Perkins