Awash in Color: Spectrum at Metaphor Contemporary

 

At Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, Julie Gross (window) and Gabriele Evertz (back wall) pull you in

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A range of visual themes, linked by the use of color, is on exhibition at this show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn. The full title of the show is Spectrum: Four Painters Cover the Spectrum of Style and Color, and the announcement card on the door shows you that range. I am, of course, partial to Gabriele Evertz and Julie Gross, whose color is carried by geometry--or is it the other way around?

Evertz's optically charged paintings, large or small, are rigorous in their execution--technically perfect lines that set up retinal tension as the adjacent colors fight for assertion. The nearly wall-size work at the rear of the gallery was created specifically for this exhibition. Up close, the broad expanse of shimmering, vibrating color calls to you; you could fall into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Indeed, allowing yourself to do so--at least optically--results in a pleasant sense of spatial disorientation. From a distance the vibrational tension is muted so that the work exists as a shimmering color field.
Gross's work, with its oozy bubbles and droplets, is as sensuous as Evertz's is austere. The optical agitation in these paintings makes the elements appear to be moving. Are they pushing and squeezing one another or does it just appeat that way? Gross knows her color theory; hop on to see where it takes you.
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The four artists in Spectrum: Evertz, Margaret Neill, Gross and Elizabeth Terhune

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Gabriele Evertz. Four Reds and Ice Blues, acrylic on canvas, on the back wall; an installaton of smaller paintings in the foreground.

In the middle ground, paintings by Margaret Neill. This image from the gallery website
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A view from the mezzanine, above: That's Evertz in the bottom center of the frame. A painting by Margaret Neill is at left

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On the mezzanine, below: Four paintings on vellum by Julie Gross with paintings by Elizabeth Terhune and Neill in the distance. This image from the gallery website

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.Metaphor Contemporary Art is owned and run by two painters, Rene Lynch and Julian Jackson, whose passion for painting and painters is an almost palpable element of the gallery. The gallery itself is a dramatic high-ceilinged white box that opens onto Atlantic Avenue. If you haven't been there yet, go. Directions are on the gallery website. It's open on Sundays. And there's going to be an artists' talk on June 1, the last day of the show..

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