Edward Moses’ first show in five years (at the Mizuno Gallery) is composed entirely of lithographs executed at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop last year. Moses’ training and experience as an architect is clearly evident in this work which resembles architecture in its structure, but not in the impalpability of its color relationships.

Although not particularly happy at having produced works which were printed (and thus not unique), Moses found it was possible to achieve the color clarity and diffusion he desired only through a graphic process. Moses answers his disaffection with the graphic medium by offering as a single large work all ten impressions of one print, which are framed individually but hung together in two registers of five each. This is perhaps the least successful work exhibited, for its color imperceptibility is not countered by the sensitive structural sensibilities found in the other two images in the exhibition.

Intimate in scale, these two images are printed in a number of varying color configurations. Their linear forms suggest constructions of a De Stijl sort, executed by computer, then unsterilized by additions of organic shapes which partially obliterate the mechanical order. They are suggestive of architectural site plans of a highly rational sort, with almost every bit of nature being carefully controlled, terraced, stepped off and graded, yet with several areas of natural contour left as a foil.

Their topographic quality is heightened by Moses’ partial cutting of each image and lifting this flap of printed paper above the plane of the remainder of the print. Behind the slice of space thus created he places colored papers which suggest real space as well as illusionistic space or space drawn to an architectural scale.

Color is used in an almost didactic way. While the color variations within each print determine the spatial qualities of that work, the suite is best seen as a whole. Looked at rapidly, the space and structure flip and change from one to the other like old movies as seen in a Mutoscope. The small size of these prints belies their visual power.

—Thomas H. Garver