Urban visionary Olive Ayhens has taken her focus indoors in recent years, in a series she calls “Extreme Interiors.” A group of these, devoted to science labs, is the subject of a project room show at Lori Bookstein Fine Art where her dissections of perceived space form a suggestive contrast to the architectonic abstractions of Eve Aschheim, the main display. In Ayhens’ labs there is a slight softening of the spatial stratifications that used to characterize the near-apocalyptic frenzy of her cubo-futurist streetscapes but, if anything, an intensification has occurred in the sheer nuttiness of her line and color. The weirdly at-once fearless and nervous depiction of massed banks of wires adds a Pollock-like all-overness to the Kokoschka-like pulsating, skewed, fish-eye perspective on this scene of productive chaos. The motif of a computer lab, where controlled mayhem, ad hoc efficiency and externalized mess support the creation of inner order, is the perfect metaphor for Ayhens’ mode of depiction: she is nothing if not wired. DAVID COHEN
Olive Ayhens: Electronic Laybrinth, February 23 to March 24, 2012. 138 Tenth Avenue at 19th Street, New York City, 212.750.0949
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