Jim DeFrance
Nicholas Wilder Gallery
Shimmer is the temptress of Jim DeFrance’s new work, and a dazzling surface unsettles his high constructivist intentions. Pale fields of opalescence with a glacial pink here and a pistachio glimmer there, DeFrance’s outsize flaps of stiffened (but unstretched) burlap get their icy gleam from light plus gloss—that is, from ordinary gallery illumination bouncing off the slick exterior of several layers of rolled-on, pastel-flavored acrylic. The color of these works can be as chilly as an arctic morning, as evasive as Bigfoot. Up close the slippery paint surface is undone—transformed into a flux