Lorser Feitelson headed the selection committee for this group show. What “Art Now” really defines is a light survey of the year’s gallery offerings by local artists. There are representative selections of local practitioners of Pop, Op, Formal, Cool, Figurative, and Abstract Expressionist modes. Some good people are left out, inept people are in. The affair is unpretentious, excepting the title.

Half a dozen of the twenty-odd artists make it worth the trip: John Altoon shows a large pastel drawing, so lively and accomplished as to suggest that Gorky’s brand of poetic abstraction is reborn, transformed and given new quality. Anthony Berlant’s “Les 6” six girls’ blouses rampant—is equally successful. He is a young warlock of evocative meaning, mordant wit and self-assured technique. Jesus A. Martinez is represented by two wall hangings and two freestanding sculptures in fired and glazed clay. They suggest desert growth, cracked earth, colored minerals, cactus and rock. “A Legend” by Peter Krasnow is a fine example of his familiar colorful, geometric impasto manner. Helen Lundeberg and Oliver Andrews also stand out.

—William Wilson