March 22 to April 22, 2018
300 Broome Street, between Eldridge and Allan streets
New York City, derekeller.com

At what point does a painter give up discovery in favor of control? When do innovative impulses give way to the necessity of structured action—or, indeed, the other way around? Is a painting’s “expression” separate from its aesthetic “vitality,” or are the two innately wedded? Every painter likely grapples such questions, but with Steve DiBenedetto they seem to be at the forefront of his artistic project.

Those familiar with DiBenedetto’s earlier work the paintings shown in the 2005 Whitney Museum exhibition, “Remote Viewing,” for instance will recall mazelike scenes of octopi and helicopters engrossed in eschatological, psychedelic warfare. More recently, the painter has shifted towards more abstract, ambiguous forms, but the new lexicon retains the intensely saturated color, maximalist paint application, and meandering sightlines for which he is renowned. In his current show at Derek Eller Gallery, “Toasted with Everything” DiBenedetto has birthed a family of “vibrant mutants” (as the exhibition’s press release names them) that tangle and wrestle with one another; at times they coexist, at others they might devour their own like Cronos. The eight paintings on view here take the question of “aliveness” within gestural expressionism to an almost symbolic level.

While in comparison with earlier painterly excesses these new works seem somewhat pared-down, DiBenedetto remains a leading exponent of randomness and chance. Pigment is added and removed from his canvases in more ways than one can name, let along count. Whether brushed, squeezed from the tube, or knifed on, colors cut and bleed into one another to create unpredictable surfaces that reward close viewing.

But stepping back, the energy generated by this freewheeling textural hedonism is often bounded by strong lines that direct the eye and build form. Paint is allowed to speak, but within rational limits that confine at the same time that they organize. Paintings like Three Third Eyes (2018) bear the mark of cubism as much as, if not more than, gestural expressionism.

Much of this has to do, I think, with the coherent separation of figure and ground that DiBenedetto insists upon. Though the two smallest works in the exhibition, Paramus Mars (2018) and Inverse Evidence (2018), are surface-oriented and nearly non-spatial, the rest of the paintings depict one or more figurative “mutants” hovering in front of abstract, colorful backdrops. The distinction is made often by the chiaroscuro of dark figures against a bright field. Elsewhere, strong outlining defines the body against its milieu. Although DiBenedetto’s backgrounds are as texturally unpredictable as the “flesh” of the mutants themselves, their spatial flatness and shallow depth contribute to the sense of control forced upon these wild monsters.

The claustrophobic compositions found within this exhibition only heighten this restrictive mood. DiBenedetto experiments well with scale in his largest paintings, such as the exhibition’s namesake, Toasted with Everything (2018). At almost ten feet high, this work on linen shows four or five distinct and inimitable bodies that linger in uneasy coexistence. (The glassy, tear-welling eyes of the Mayan figurine is one of the few explicitly poignant moments in the exhibition.) Most other paintings, however, depict one central mutant taking up most of the canvas though rarely transgressing its outer boundaries. Arms, legs, tentacles bend, meander, and weave, but typically turn back on themselves just before exiting the frame of view. The “window” of the canvas is more like a cage in DiBenedetto’s usage of the convention. Compositional moves seem intelligent and self-aware, as if in themselves a metaphor for the ineluctable limitations of paint on canvas as a vehicle for the imagination.

I’ve lingered on the restraint conveyed by these so clearly exuberant works because I think it touches on an exciting paradox of energy and vitality. It seems clear that by moving to this more self-contained, even poetic world, DiBenedetto has created for himself a working space that ironically allows for unexpected things to happen more often. It is precisely the shallow depth in which his mutants sit that enables their ambiguous, biomorphic forms to shift and transform in uncanny ways. The tension created by their sense of capture is tragicomic. DiBenedetto’s painterly unpredictability is all the more potent when considered against the sturdy forms constructed by line and chiaroscuro.

For a painter so well known for inordinate, mannered excess, whether of surface or symbolism, DiBenedetto’s recent move to making more subdued and abstract pictures is all the braver. The successes and range demonstrated in this exhibition suggest that the gamble has opened up a fertile path.

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Cross-breeding the Pop gigantism of Claes Oldenburg and the oozing precionism of Paul Thek, Michelle Segre was at the forefront of a 1990s “return to order,” sculpting imposingly meticulous wax enlargements of natural vanitases—fungal, moldy, and crepuscular.  For all their prescient affinity with the ecological critiques of Roxy Paine, Keith Edmier, Alexis Rockman, et al., Segre’s works seemed to be more interested in channeling the traditional gravitas of Henry Moore.  The new body of work on view at Derek Eller, however, building on several years of funkier, more fantastic surrealism, constitutes a glittering rebirth into the wild.  These colorful improvisations of twisting metals, tensioned fibers, found objects and eccentric plops of plaster electrify the air around them with slightly dangerous charm and something of the ingenuous resourcefulness of toddlers’ drawings, without sacrificing an ounce of Segre’s crisp sculptural command. In some works literal bones of earlier sculptures have been delicately encrusted as relics, their fastidious density tuned like crystal receivers to the play of alien transmissions.

June 1 to June 30, 2012 at 615 West 27th Street, between 11th and 12th avenues, New York City, 212-206-6411

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July 1 to August 13, 2010
615 West 27th Street, between 11th and 12th avenues
New York City, (212) 206-6411

A small but accomplished show at Derek Eller of abstract, mostly expressionist works by Jeff Kessel included a wonderful untitled painting (all the paintings are untitled and were finished this year) that looks like a cross between (abstract) Gerhard Richter and Willem de Kooning. At 66 by 48 inches, the large canvas is powerfully active with broad scrapings of the brush, which follows its own momentum and lends structure to Kessel’s exuberant handling of color. These curving strokes are particularly dense at the top of the painting but also occur in the middle and lower levels. The palette is light—pink and blue are used, while on the left side of the painting we see small blotches of orange and bright green. Above almost everything are a series of red lines, one of which trails downward to the middle right of the work. Drips are frequent and lyrical. Like the rest of the show, this work is excitingly well done, even if we are a bit bemused by Kessel’s decision to paint in a manner more or less overwhelmed by earlier artists.

The larger question implied by Kessel is whether abstract painting of this sort can hold its own in the present. My feeling is that art is now in a position to support work of many different intentions and expressions, and that paintings like Kessel’s therefore deserve serious attention. This does not shut down the anxiety of influence that attends the work that follows abstract expressionism, which remains the great moment in American modern art. The contemporary artist cannot treat the present as the past; instead, he has to assimilate or internalize the legacy and find new ways of rendering that approach without stealing from it. Kessel has mostly done that. The gallery’s reception area displayed only one work, a wonderfully vibrant and somehow new-seeming piece. Five black stripes, set together and rising at a slight angle from the lower left to the upper right, make a strong statement across the body of the painting. The background is complex: white predominates on the left, while a reddish pink activates the right. Random strokes and drips create a palimpsest in which Kessel reveals his thinking and makes clear the sequence of his painterly decisions. There is an attractive truthfulness about all the work, whose transparent layers reveal ghosts of other layers and document the history of the painting.

Richter is a finicky abstractionist and de Kooining is a superbly messy one; the interesting aspect of Kessel’s art is found in its ability to be precise and atmospheric in the same work of art.  Of course, sometimes the artist leans more in one direction than in others. He shows a predilection for control in one beautiful painting that consists of dark, broad brushstrokes creating a triangular center. This is a somber painting, but one of unusual energy. Its effects comprise narrow lines of paint revealing the movement of the brush, with some stripes of lighter colors—green, yellow, red. Here Kessel seems to have found his métier. Abstract painting is being kept alive by artists like him, especially when he finds the groove in his search for a language that is historically new. Another work, dominated by a big “X” on the left, as well as other lines that sweep across the composition vertically and diagonally, nicely reveals the conditions of its making. Yellow and white passages, by turns both linear and organic, overlap the lines just described. Around the edges of the painting we find Kessel’s by-now-familiar broad strokes of paint. While the effects aren’t loaded with pigment, there is a well-balanced abstraction here that gives pleasure to his audience. Kessel, despite the burden of translating a past given to greatness, manages to remain his own person.

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on view at Mayerson’s exhibition Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea, Derek Eller Gallery, 615 West 27th Street, between 11th and 12th avenues, through November 15.

This was an artcritical PIC in November 2008

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October 20, 2006 – November 22, 2006

Keith Mayerson: Kings & Queens
Derek Eller Gallery
615 West 27th Street
New York City

October 20-November 25, 2006

Keith Mayerson and James Rielly appropriate photographic and filmic source material, transforming it through careful editing, alteration of scale and proportion, and inventive use of color. Whereas Mr. Rielly tends to appropriate photographic imagery of anonymous people from journalistic sources — favoring images of faces and groups of people often dressed in costume — Mr. Mayerson is interested in iconic images of famous people. And many elements found in their work are also pure imagination.

In Mr. Rielly’s current exhibition at Galeria Ramis Barquet, there is one watercolor that exemplifies the kind of irony he favors. The painting is titled “We Sustained Heavy Losses” (2006) and it is an image of a weird boy/man wearing a pale red shirt, black vest, lopsided sheriff’s badge, ill-fitting black cowboy hat, and a prank arrow piercing his temples à la Steve Martin. The disjointedness of the serious title and the seemingly light-hearted imagery causes a rift between the viewer and the work, and the humor becomes something sordid. Are we supposed to laugh at this clownish figure or pity him? What kind of losses are we talking about?

Mr. Rielly has developed a very light touch and minimal technique using watercolors through the years. There are no superfluous marks or tones. He places his figures and faces within nondescript environments, often leaving the paper in the background untouched. Sometimes he suggests water or grass, but there is no obvious context. This lends the work a symbolic and ambiguous quality. In the painting “Give me, more more more” (2006), we see the tilted head of a young male or female with three cigarettes hanging out of his or her mouth. This could be a symbol of gluttony or demanding youth, but the tilt of the head gives it an element of seductiveness. It could be that the figure is offering these cigarettes rather than consuming them.

There are a number of paintings of groupings of people in this exhibition, including a picture of a red-tinted audience gazing at some event in “Sometimes Everyone Looks Hairy” (2006), and a picture of a huddled mass of children with numbers on their chest in “Red, Yellow, Blue” (2006). The tri-colored group of children might be a comment on the psychology of the crowd, the loss of individuality.

Another painting with multiple figures, “Let’s queue” (2006), depicts three adults. One man is dressed as a centaur and wears a suit jacket, and the woman dressed as a mermaid holds a handbag. They could be waiting in line for a movie, and the casual combination of the ordinary and the extraordinary invites multiple readings.

Keith Mayerson, whose work is on view at Derek Eller Gallery, paints pictures of pop-culture narrative and icons, but he is not interested in deconstructing our worship of celebrity. His work is about the painful and euphoric process of losing oneself in someone else. His painting style features energetic and tactile brushstrokes and a lush, subtly modulated palette. The effect is so sensual and earnest that we forget we are looking at images we have seen hundreds if not thousands of times before: The Beatles showered in confetti during their first visit to America, in the painting “The Beatles 1964” (2006); Elvis thrusting his pelvis forward as he balances on his toes onstage in the painting “Elvis ’56” (2006). As many times as we have seen these images, Mr. Mayerson manages to create surprising and beautiful translations into oil paint. The medium slows things down, and lends these beloved figures a timeless and elegiac quality.

In paintings like “Love Triumphant (James Dean in a Tree)” (2006), where we see a lushly painted image of James Dean masturbating naked in a tree, Mr. Mayerson has managed to transform a celebrity into a symbolical figure in order to express generalizations about human existence. The leafy canopies surrounding the figure are filled with writhing abstract forms and bodies. James Dean with an erection is a force of nature, synonymous with organic growth and plentitude.

In the painting “Temptation on the Mount (King Kong and Fay Wray battle the Giant Taradactyle)” (2006), the gorilla clutches Fay Wray with one hand and fends off a dinosaur bird with the other. In this painting, these aren’t silly Hollywood special effects. They represent aspects of our humanity (which they also do in the original film). But the sensuality of Mr. Mayerson’s brushstrokes lends a tactile quality that is missing from the film. The static painted image stands in contrast to the kinetic film image. The intensity of King Kong’s feelings for the human female become something more than a plot element in a narrative arc, and all of the latent sexual content comes to the surface in the painting. Battling monsters also look cool.

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January 5 – February 2, 2002

A fat graphite figure slops out of a multi-colored disc in David Dupuis’s “Love Connection” at Derek Eller Gallery, licking the edge of the twin disc on the opposite panel of the diptych; the color wheel has got its tongue. Or phallus, which suggests that if color could talk, it would talk about sex. Language often appears to be rising (or falling) out of the surfaces in this remarkable group show, rising and receding, changing form, just eluding one’s grasp, as it were. Biomorphic shapes drift over colored-pencil wave-patterns in two other compositions by Dupuis. Abstract shapes within thought or dialogue balloons of cartoon illustration imply that something is being expressed under the pleasant glow of amorphous suns hovering nearby. The allusions to thought and talk tease us out of the merely decorative without resolving into reference or abstraction. The general effect is a trippy isolation, the odd creatures of another world viewed through sealed glass. Even in those works in which the figures are somewhat more accessible there is a sense of pre-verbal yearning, of significance pushing up from the surface.

In Nina Bavasso’s “Suzanne’s Burial Mound,” [see cover] flower shapes and quilt patterns in pinks and lavenders weave through the geometric lines. The composition, breast-like, mound-like, pillow-like, forms into something at once comforting and restless, improvising on feminine motifs while allowing the momentum of repetitive pattern to inscribe the surface with an intensity of gesture. Bavasso’s elaboration of simple, freely drawn shapes has been compared to doodling, but, as is the case with Dupuis’s work, the building up of irregular forms into an off-balance mass suggests something more complicated and ambitious than that. Her images get at a merging of biology and signifying system, of vital energy and consciousness, as if the unwieldy cell structures she draws were tottering into nostalgia or whimsy.

Andrew Masullo’s three-dimensional paintings introduce a brightly colored and palpable thingness to all this play on signifying and not signifying. He builds and shapes with paint, raising three-dimensional shapes off flat, painted grids or monochrome surfaces. Again, there are biomorphic shapes, and hints at codes and signs, as well as cheerful allusions to Pop, Minimalism and Modernist abstraction. It is difficult to say what this adds up to, or if adding up to a particular point is at issue. Masullo titles his works according to their place in his oeuvre, and by now the four digit stretch of each title has its own poignancy. In this near hermetic persistence Massullo connects, paradoxically, with Dupuis and Bovasso. That Derek Eller should bring together such particular artists, and allow their works to speak among each other without an imposed rubric, is a credit to his eye and to his critical acumen.

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