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...in the Work of Thomas Nozkowski, Tomma Abts and Roberto Juarez
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Right now (and in the immediately recent past) there’s a lot of geometry in New York, along with a lot of color. As is often the case, geometry and color go hand in hand. And in the work of Thomas Nozkowski, Tomma Abts and Roberto Juarez, this is decidedly true. I’ve chosen to report on these three artists as a group, because it is the constancy of elements in their work, as well as the range of expression within their self-imposed parameters, that bring greater depth to their painting, and certainly more profound pleasure in our perception of it.
Thomas Nozkowski at Pace Wildenstein: Untitled P-38, 2008, oil on paper, 22 x 30 inches
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Thomas Nozkowski, whose show at Pace Wildenstein came down last week, maintains the standard here. His easel-size paintings are not only constant in size, 22 x 28 inches, but in horizontal orientation (the works on paper are 22 x 30 inches). But what worlds within those parameters! Loose-limbed geometry is precisely realized in oil that’s as lightly handled as watercolor. The hues soar in chromatic brilliance, though Nozkowski frequently tethers them with dunned-down greens and ochers; it’s a wise strategy, for the hues tug, tug, tug to pull free, and the tension is sublime.
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Thomas Nozkowski at Pace Wildenstein: Untitled 8-93, 2007, 22 x 28 inches
Nozkowski is prolific; the 40 works in this show are from the past three years, including several from this year. Am I wrong in thinking that after so many years of painting, he’s reached a place where the work just flows? Not that the compositions are not invested with formal decisions, but the brushwork seems confident and unlabored. Everything about this work radiates with a kind of visceral and joyous energy.
Thomas Nozkowski at Pace Wildenstein:
Above, Untitled 8-107, 2008; below, Untitled 8-103, 2008
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The regularity of the installation suggests a narrative—readable from left or right—and each of the pictures suggests a story in a language you respond to but don’t quite understand. The formal, grid-referenced language is simple enough, but the inventiveness of circle, square, zig and zag, and the ways those shapes are endlessly permutated and placed in ambiguous space or against a patterned ground, is staggering. The visual pleasure is almost overwhelming. God, I love them!
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Installation of Thomas Nozkowski paintings at Pace Wildenstein. This and all Nozkowski images from the gallery website
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Tomma Abts, whose show at the New Museum is up through June 29, works within some of the same parameters of size and orientation (hers are a uniform 18 7/8 x 15 inches) to very different effect. Actually, the two shows seem tailor made for comparison—a kind of geometric He Said/She Said— for while Nozkowski’s work leans toward the organic, Abts is rigorously hard edged; while his colors are exuberant and kind of quirky, hers are often grayed and somber; and while his brushwork is loose and seemingly effortless, hers is dense, opaque, and almost obsessively ascetic. He’s prolific; she’s not. .
Tomma Abts installation in the skylit fourth-floor at The New Museum.
Image from "Abts' Traction," Sharon L. Butler's wonderfully titled article in the current Brooklyn Rail
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The crystalline rigorousness of Abts’s painting is odd --the shapes and compositions seem completely anachronistic to any particular time, place or ism--but they're appealing nonetheless. In part it's the mystery of them; you can’t help but wonder what led to the painting you see before you, because close-up inspection reveals the textural pentimenti of what seem to be many paintings under the surface. In the exhibition brochure, Abts describes her process this way: "I work on each [painting] over a long period of time; there are many layers of establishing something, then many layers of getting to know what I have established and trying different options. The final painting is a concentrate of the many paintings underneath." The slight shadows she paints into her pictures just increase the ambiguity of what’s on or under the surface.
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Tomma Abts, clockwise from above: Tabel, 1999; Meko, 2006; Fewe, 2005; Keke, 2006; all images from the Internet
To revisit the narrative analogy for a moment, if Nozkowski’s installation reads like a volume of fabulous stories—A Thousand and One Nights, for instance— Abts’s installation suggests to me the Stations of the Cross. Well, that's a bit dramatic. I haven't been religious in that way since I was a child, but I remember vividly the exquisite mystery and somber ecstasy they evoked. That's what I mean to convey.
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Roberto Juarez is working within a totally different set of parameters—not of size or perimeter shape but of the ovoid shape within the composition of each painting, the vesica piscis. Latin for "fish bladder," this shape is formed by the overlap of two circles of equal size.
Roberto Juarez at Charles Cowles Gallery: V.P., 2007-2008, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 59 1/2 inches; Whale, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 60 x 84 inches
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The vesica piscis is sacred geometry, an ovoid shape suggesting the fish as symbol for Christ, the birth passage, even the waxing and waning of the moon. In Juarez’s work it seems to be a purely formal compositional element. The "fish" swim this way or that, a lyrical geometry of movement as well as layered color.
Roberto Juarez at Charles Cowles Gallery: Latticework, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 72 by 96 inches; detail below
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The layering has a physical manifestation as well, for Juarez paints on canvas and draws on a layer of rice paper that is then affixed to the canvas, and the two layers are further worked together. What initially appear as pentimenti are in fact essential and intentional elements of the composition. The elements seem to float—a sensation not unlike what I experienced while looking at the work.
The show is at the Charles Cowles Gallery through May 17.
Constancy and variation: Juarez's work on paper at the Charles Cowles Gallery
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As a coda to this post, I’d like to acknowledge the generosity and understanding of the Charles Cowles Gallery for letting me and other artists photograph in its space. This gallery and many, many others understand how important it is for artists, bloggers (and teachers and other art professionals) to have direct access to an artist’s work.
Conversely, I’d like to note the difficulty of obtaining images at Pace Wildenstein and the New Museum, both of which have no-photo rules. Pace at least has posted an excellent selection of images on its blogsite, but the New Museum requires that its PR department be contacted ahead of time to arrange to shoot the works, or to acquire images for publication. For a working artist such as myself, this is simply not possible. (It is huge challenge to maintain a painting practice, see art regularly and blog about it. To have to add secretarial duties to this schedule is simply impossible.) As a result, I pulled images from the Internet. If what the New museum wanted was to control image quality, their no-photo policy is self defeating; I would have gotten images of far better quality had I been allowed to shoot them myself with an eight-megapixel camera, rather than pulling relatively lo-res images off the Internet. If their no-photo policy was simply to control the flow of images, well that’s just not possible, for as you see, I have posted pictures.
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