George Billis Gallery
521 West 26th Street
New York City, 212-645-2621

Anyone who has encountered Elizabeth O’Reilly’s work, even if only through a handful of her eight solo exhibitions at the George Billis Gallery, will find in this latest collection both an intensification of the artist’s passion for abandoned places and a prodigious expansion of her ability to interpret the ephemeral effects of light with a minimum of fuss. After experimenting for a time with a hybrid of collage and watercolor, O’Reilly is once again applying unbound oil color to ground, guiding her brush with just the right viscosity to imply in a single stroke the effects of texture, shadow and form on surfaces as simple as distant tree tops and as complex as the rude and weathered clapboarding of a seventeenth century farm house.

This latest exhibition consists of several groups of paintings, including a series of pictures completed on the grounds of St. Mary’s City, a restored colonial settlement forty miles south of Annapolis, Maryland. O’Reilly concentrates here on the dark, somber silhouettes of relic farmhouses that seem to trap the brilliant Chesapeake sunlight in triangular black holes. So effective is the contrast between their mysterious gloom and the brilliant hues of the surrounding environment that one is tempted to make more of the gothic context than the paintings actually address. Designed centuries ago to shelter the inhabitants from what was then the mortal hazards of weather and landscape—precisely the elements that frame those same buildings today in bucolic stillness—O’Reilly bends her focus away from a conceptual presentation of the site’s historical circumstance and trains it on the stillness that remains.

A consistent theme in O’Reilly’s work is the study of derelict locations, but her focus as a painter is always on presence, on what is actually there more than the haunted absence of what was. In Black House and Shadow (2012), it is apparent that the artist faced into the sun to create her image, confronting the façade of a gabled structure similar in form to one of Monet’s haystacks. However, unlike the impressionist’s exploitation of shadow in the service of color’s intensity, O’Reilly limits the higher keys of color to her rendering of grass and trees, while the house sits in its own windowless murk. The structures and their environment may remain at odds with each other, but her dovetailing compositions resolve themselves in spite of their incongruent sources. O’Reilly draws this tension to its limit in Red Chimney, in which an intrusion of dense, sooty umber almost dominates the composition, leaving hints of trees, grass and a footpath clinging to the frame.

White House, White Boat (2012), part of a series painted on the Maine coast plays to a higher color pitch. For instance, a tenacious stroke of yellow below the soffit of a small cabin follows along the top of a pale blue wall, recalling Fairfield Porter’s paintings of the same coastal region, as does the subtle pink, violet and greenish whites that enliven these distinctly sunnier shadows. Though the look of each series is radically different, what the Maine paintings share with the Maryland panels is a resolute encounter with what is actually there.

Filling out the exhibition of almost twenty paintings are several landscape views of the water’s edge that were painted on a trip to the south of Ireland. Here O’Reilly takes a cue from nature’s own articulation of presence and absence in the form of rising and ebbing tides. The perennially overcast Irish sky illuminating indescribable reconstructions of sand, water and stone have inspired the artist to produce horizontal canvases that approach pure abstraction. The range that O’Reilly can find within the parameters of plein-air painting is expanded even further with Gray House, Night (2012), a painting that offers the viewer a sense of what can be achieved with the barest means. As minimal as a Whistler nocturne, its muted and iconic understatement fixes itself in the memory as deliberately and as efficiently as it was executed.

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“brush, pencil, chisel, knife”
511 Gallery, 511 West 25 Street (212.255.2885).

Industrial Beauty
George Billis Gallery, 511 West 25th Street (212.645.2621).

Synthesis: Experiments in Collaboration
Axel Raben Gallery, 526 West 26 Street, (212.647.9064).

Joan Brown: Painted Constructions
George Adams Gallery, 41 West 57 Street, 212.644.5665).

Versions of these reviews originally appearedThe New York Sun on Thursday, July 22 and Thursday, July 29, 2004

Willard Boepple: Sculpture

Willard Boepple is a sculptor whose vocabulary draws from the look and language of architecture. Architecture is a social art, a reflective instrument of the society for which it builds. Any sculpture that aggressively refers to it, leaning on the prestige of the architect’s craft, makes itself vulnerable to distinctions between the communal aims of architecture and the more individualistic ones of fine art. It risks the charge of mimicry, which is what remains once structural complexity, weight-bearing concerns and purposes of shelter and assembly are removed.“Room” (2000) is a nine foot high skeletal house-shape in patinated aluminum. Light on its feet and open like a trellis, each of its four sides resembles the leading of Frank Lloyd Wright’s characteristic stained glass windows. Here are the same closely paired verticals on each side of a broader rectangle, joined at intervals by short parallel bars. Where quadrangles of colored glass might be, Mr. Boepple drops aluminum panels perpendicular to their posts to serve as shelving.

Viewers are likely to wonder where on the lawn this shining gazebo would show to best effect. Seen straight, unfiltered through the lens of stylish discourse, it is unmistakably an upmarket garden folly. Picture it covered with wisteria vines, shelves stocked with dahlias and wild strawberries in Italian pots. Yes, I know the thought is inadmissible “in the ateliers of any pedantic fine art,” to use Wright’s phrase; and it is hardly what Mr. Boepple intended. But what an artist intends and what he achieves are not identical. It is a fallacy to confuse them.Mr. Boepple’s three dense, painted poplar “temples”, each from 2003, suggest compressed tabletop rearrangements of David Smith’s rectangular forms for “Cubi IX” (1961). Anyone interested in modern sculpture will be reminded also of the cubical variations of Jacques Schnier and Hans Aeschenbacher from the same period.

Designated as temples, Mr. Boepple’s block configurations assert kinship with the ancient megaron, precursor to Doric structures. (The megaron informs Wright’s Unity Church, which he referred to as a temple.) But Mr. Boepple’s suppressed entrances do not lead to any interior sanctum; they go clear through to the other side. Sacred space is displaced by a box puzzle, a simplified maze that exposes its own blind alley. If you rest a drink on top, no deities will be offended.

brush, pencil, chisel, knife”

511 Gallery (formerly Miller/Geisler) celebrates its name change with a group show of 13 of its artists. The exhibition is ambitious, aspiring to stretch common understanding of what constitutes painting and sculpture. It promises art that moves beyond crusty constraints to become more elastic in definition.

Lurking here is the assumption that tradition is an antique, like the stiffened antimacassar on the back of great-grandpa’s chair. It is an attitude aimed at audiences who comprehend tradition as a reiteration of the past rather than an inheritance to be interpreted by each generation for its own purposes.

511 showcases the fruits of that mistake. Post-industrial folk art is the reigning genre. Unlike the pre-industrial kind, made by untrained individuals, the post variant is a mass product forged in an art school vernacular. Outsider art is now insider art, a reversal enabled by pundits, promoters and academics for whom artwork exists as a mere incident en route to the commentary.

Jennifer Odem dyes a cheap crocheted table cloth red, soaks it in acrylic medium, then flops it on the floor to set. Ed Fraga takes the votive path with “Cathedral” ( 2001), a crude plywood construction that cobbles a headless Christmas ornament with a tiny landscape cut to the shape of a palladium window. Epoxy is his crucial medium. Matt Ernst’s series of small “Guideboats” (2002) gives a good imitation of the sort of thing children carry home from camp. Mark Cooper’s “Endless Column” (2002) is a roadside totem, cousin to ones that appear along the East River Drive under the overpass to the Triborough Bridge.

The most persuasive works are by those artists who are not straining for a style. Bryan Le Boeuf’s “Trois Bateaux” (2004), the centerpiece of his recent solo show, gives evidence of maturing to certain artistic convictions, something quite different from style. He combines sympathy for the human figure with a quirky, mildly surreal compositional wit. Watch to see where he takes it.

Sculptor Mark Mennin is similarly satisfying, mindful of the traditions of his craft. His single, small marble “Head” (2003) is a finely worked mask of a fleshy, homely male elevated by materials to a solemnity the model might lack in life. It projects from the wall at a slight angle, reminiscent of medieval gargoyles or a portrait head from the sedilia in Westminster Abbey.

Popular appreciation of landscape hinges on the romance of a good view. By contrast, the scenery of urban infrastructures—the natural setting of urban artists—is more challenging.

Even middling painters can produce attractive pictures of beautiful places. It takes more robust sensibilities to seek order and grace in city sights readily ignored. Easy pleasure is not available. Viewers are on their own to discover the emotional keynote to scenes that have nothing picturesque about them.

Industrial Beauty

“Industrial Beauty” exhibits cityscape paintings and drawings by 24 artists. So much intelligent work is here that there is not enough column space to give it its due. Let me start with Stephen Hicks who impresses with the beauty of his paint handling and the vigor of his perceptions. He brings emotional depth to ordinary street corners and mobile homes. Pitch-perfect color and careful drawing, disguised by the fluidity of his paint, elevate these small paintings above the random realities they depict.

Elizabeth O’Reilly draws magic out of the 3rd Street Bridge and derelict buildings on the Gowanus Canal. True as her paintings are to their locations in and around Red Hook, they serve as microcosms of the effects of modernity on the outer boroughs of every city. She shares with Mr. Hicks a lively brush and an optimism toward her subjects. Nicholas Evans-Cato’s wide-angled “Panorama” (2003) captures the atmospheric damp of rain-washed streets. Shadowless gray light, cool tonalities, gleaming puddles and sweep of space evoke Gustave Caillabotte’s Paris on a rainy day.

Ron Milewicz’ “Court House Square” (2003) is a coloristic tour de force, subordinating naturalism to the geometric structures of his motif and a high-keyed palette. The Citicorp building in Long Island City looks glorious in yellow. Geometry is also the hallmark of Rick Dula’s imposing cement factory, mathematical clarity of form taking precedence over subjective sensations.

Andrew Lenaghan negotiates the complexity and visual clutter of urban scenes with an ease of concentration that reminds me of Antonio Lopez-García’s great views of Madrid. So much is depicted, you barely notice how much is merely indicated or left out. Sudden touches of subtle color move the eye around the canvas; smooth surfaces belie the actual density of his paint.

Lois Dodd’s characteristic insouciance lends a hint of whimsy to factories in Jersey City. Richard Orient’s Long Island fish hatchery is touched with the same melancholy that informs rural barns. Thomas Connelly reveals the controlled order of a loading dock; his nightscape of a commercial lot is a harmony of brooding tones.

Diana Horowitz’ courtesy toward the man-made landscape is a constant pleasure. So is the work is Roland Kulla, Stephen Magsig, Constance La Palombara, Andrew Haines, Stanley Goldstein and others here.

Apart from Ms. Dodd, the show contains few names known outside New York painting circles. If celebrity is your guide to quality, you might as well catch the next Hampton jitney. But anyone with eyes will be glad to have seen this show.

Synthesis: Experiments in Collaboration

Collaboration in the arts has a long tradition; and pooling skills to extend the range of individual talent is a worthy activity. So I had hopes for this show.

I should have known better. Unlike the anonymous cooperation of the old workshop system, contemporary couplings exist to produce a two-headed prima donna. In Axel Raben’s exhibition of nine artist pairs, art work takes a rear seat to the synthetic dyads which are the true artifacts. Viewers are thrown into the faithless arms of the press release for guidance.

David Humphrey & Jennifer Coates have a game going: one suggests a subject; the other draws it. Thus, a “composite authorial self” is created. Drawings include a bare-bottomed Santa squatting to pass snowflakes; a cartoon cat biting a bunny beside a plateful of maggots. In this way “habits are disabled, inhibitions are dissolved … and skill-shortcomings encouraged.” Precisely.

Laura Lisbon & Suzanne Silver investigate “the mutual interference of layered mark-making.” They take turns scribbling on legal paper and post-it notes with colored pencil, likening their process to the Talmud (compiled over centuries by multiple commentators). To support their self-assessment, they exhibit their email correspondence, a text inclining to the grand.

Creighton Michaels, an otherwise attractive abstract painter, foregoes painting here for a conceptual gig. He inserts twig-like dowels individually into the wall, creating visual patterns similar to those in a kid’s book of mazes. Mr. Michaels’ installation is lit, sort of, by James Clark’s fluorescent bulbs in plastic bags. Bulbs are spotted with thumb prints, like a perp sheet. Team effort is deemed “an environment … a land of a thousand dances.”

Craig & Sean Miller provide handmade miniature shipping crates topped by a doll house gallery exhibiting a nano-sample of another artist’s work. These may be interpreted as “sculptures, performance pieces or a group portrait of contemporary art practice.” Unless a crate is just a crate.

The unspoken aim of all this conspicuous mutuality is to demonstrate that the artists make the grade as intellectuals. Art making is largely a platform for self-centered egos; the work of hands is a minor interest.

Joan Brown: Painted Constructions

Joan Brown ‘s work was a fey offspring of Bay Area figuration and funk art. Making and breaking rules to suit herself, she could be exasperating but she never bored.

On view at George Adams are works from the early 70’s: cardboard sculptures (begun in her kitchen from household materials while her studio was under renovation); a metal cutout; and large-scale paintings and drawings.

The more distant the post-60’s counter culture becomes, the more the paintings recede into the era and movements that generated them. But the constructions, rarely exhibited in her lifetime (1938-90), convey in full Ms. Brown’s distinctive inventiveness and humor. The fun of their making is still there to be seen.

Assembled here for the first time as a body of work, the constructions articulate a nimble faux-naif sophistication that survives the tropes of their times. Cutout couples dance around the deck of “Luxury Liner” (1973), a Noah’s Ark for party animals. The smokestack belches a musical score. “Divers” (1974) hangs from the ceiling so we can see the swimmers from above and below the water line. “Dancers on a Car” (1973 is just that: a couple waltzing across the hood of a 1940’s-style sedan, a Florine-Stettheimer-like fantasia in 3-D.

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“Mari Lyons: Mostly Broadway at 80th Street” at First Street Gallery until November 29 (526 W. 26th Street Suite 915, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 646 336 8053)

“Elizabeth O’Reilly” at George Billis Gallery until November 29 (511 W.25th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212 645 2621)

The Will Barnet exhibition closing this holiday weekend at Alexandre observes the spirit of Thanksgiving. Consisting of four paintings of the 1960s and a cache of supporting drawings, this gem of a show, at once elegant and scholarly, has abstraction and representation share a feast of equals.

Nowadays the once virulent opposition, abstraction versus representation, really is as an old chestnut. The very act of painting has been isolated in such a fashion as to thrust rival camps into comradeship, rather like Tsarists and Mensheviks sharing a common exile. Furthermore, enough contemporaries bridge the divide between the two idioms, like Gerhard Richter with his hyperrealism and his painterly abstraction, to make the dichotomy redundant.

But Mr. Barnet, who is ninety two and going strong, is of a different vintage: like Richard Diebenkorn or Philip Guston, his shifting back and forth between paradigms is almost a defining aspect of his career.

The pattern for these artists was to start realist, then discover abstraction, and thence to and from between syntheses of the two. Mr. Barnet is now, in fact, revisiting his (for him) purist abstraction of the post-war period in reworkings of old compositions. Like Guston, his second volte face (the readmission of depictive content during the heyday of formal abstraction) was met with incredulity and vitriol.

Which seems bizarre, looking at Mr. Barnet’s works of that decade, so well behaved are representation and non-objectivity in each other’s company. All four paintings here are tightly composed, coolly executed, gentle on the senses, and lyrical in the interplay of shapes. The non-representational pair are themselves politely poised between constructivism and organic abstraction. The figural works, highly stylized mother-child groupings, find their tenderness equally in humane content (they feature the artist’s wife and daughter) and unabrasive shape coordination.

These portraits acknowledge Matisse, but without any hint of that master’s angst. They also look rather like de-sexualized Balthus’s, sharing his sweetened orientalism, and there is more than a hint of Milton Avery, though without the latter’s energetic primitivism. The overriding qualities in Mr. Barnet are always softness and charm- hardly characteristics to guarantee a modernist his place in the pantheon. But these paintings that so unabashed about what they are and represent they seem likely somehow to survive on their own terms.

Interestingly, from the point of view of current credibility, form consciousness is more acute and sophisticated in the figural works than the abstract ones. It is as if human content proved a decoy rather than a distraction. When left to dominate, the abstract objects became obsessed with their own identity. Precisely because the portraits are so upfront in their decorative stylization and shameless in their sentiment, they are less like period pieces than the abstract paintings.

If Mr. Barnet puts you in the mood for soft modernism then two other shows closing this weekend will warrant attention. Mari Lyons is having her ninth show at the First Street Gallery, the most consistently energetic of the several veteran artist cooperatives that have migrated to Chelsea. Her Upper Westside street scenes betray her tutelage under Max Beckmann in their vertiginous exuberance and their vibrant plasticity. They can also put you in mind of Red Grooms in their Breughelesque social density. Her expressive naivity (outsized automobiles, expressive street lettering) genuinely seems unforced. Dashing colors and deft little figures ensure that these paintings are real charmers.

Elizabeth O’Reilly brings a similar sunny disposition to bear on decidedly less metropolitan townscapes. Her topography stretches from country lanes in her native Ireland to wastelands along American rivers. Ms. O’Reilly wears her mentors on her sleeve, and luckily they are good ones: Lois Dodd when it comes to smart but unflashy composition and George Nick (or it could be Mr. Nick’s own mentor, Albert Marquet) for lyrical color and fluent application. Ms. O’Reilly’s quiet, fresh unpretentious paintings have more going on in them than might seem obvious to the quickly satisfied gaze, particularly in shadow-play. The collective shadow of anthropomorphized houses along the sinous street in “Ballydehob, County Cork,” 2003, for instance, is a ready-made abstract shape as quirky and autonomous as the pulsating jigsaw pieces found in Will Barnet.

A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, November 28, 2003

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