The L'eau Down: Installation Shots from "Slippery When Wet"

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I'll have paparazzi pics on Friday, but I wanted to show you installation shots of Slippery When Wet at Metaphor Contemporary Art, in which I have work. Obviously I can't review the show, but I can describe and discuss it--a diverse thematic show in which water asserts itself abstractly and representationally, in color and in black and white.

View from the front door: Foreground, Andrew Mockler, Untitled, 72 x 49 inches; three paintings from the Ocean series by Peter Schroth, each oil on paper mounted on canvas, 28 x 28 inches; two framed photographs from the Water Studies series by Don Muchow, archival inkjet prints; a grid of 18 of my Silk Road paintings, most 2009, all encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

The images, courtesy of the gallery, begin at the front entrance and sweep around clockwise. Let me say that I love Andrew Mockler's paintings, beautiful canvases that compress a thousand sunrises and sunsets into coolly formal compositions of horizontal stripes. You can see a large one, above, which is just to your left as you enter the gallery. (The gallery itself, a beautiful white cube with an enormous glass-front overhead door, must have started life as a garage. It would be completely at home on 24th Street next door to Gagosian or Mary Boone.)

Continuing around: Schroth, Muchow, Mattera

Peter Schroth and Don Muchow-- painter and photographer, above--have much in common with their water studies. Each captures the movement of the ocean. Schroth, working in oil on paper en plein air, depicts its turbulence, while Muchow, working in black and white photography, finds the moment between ebb and flow--like the still point after an exhalation.

My grid of Silk Road paintings, each 12x12, encaustic on panel

When Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch, the owner/directors of Metaphor, invited me to participate with an installation of Silk Road paintings, I allowed the aqueous theme to flow into my consciousness. The result are the paintings you see above, which are more atmospheric, more referential to the ocean than I would normally have done. I loved having the opportunity to stretch in this way. There are ridges suggestive of waves, and graduated color suggestive of horizons. I haven't become a seascape painter, of course. I retain my minimalist sensibility. But let's call it "minimalist with benefits." (You can see some individual works here.)

Suzan Batu, Slurpee, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches; Susan Homer, Rainy Day Painting, oil on canvas, 55 x 48 inches. Batu's work is all about the flow, while Homer's have a quiet lyricism inspired by the garden on a rainy day


Andrew Mockler's four gouache-on-paper studies are shown over the desk, above, and on their own, below

Climb the winding staircase in the back corner of the gallery and you reach a narrow second level. Normally it's a project space, but for this show it holds a continuation of the show. I have a larger work up here. Muchow and Mockler also have work. Nancy Manter has photographs as well. Manter's work is in the street-level window of the gallery, and that will be the first image you see in the paparazzi post on Friday, but for here, take a peek at this loge-like space. Below it is a closer view of one of Manter's works.

My Vicolo 53, 2008, carved encaustic on panel, 36 x 36 inches; two by Don Muchow; two by Nancy Manter; Andrew Mockler painting on far wall

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Below, Nancy Manter, Windowpane #2, digital photograph

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