Jonathan Perlowsky, The Mortician's Daughter (2011). 80x72 inches.
Coolly simplified realism and abstraction were the focus of this well-chosen and expansive exhibition of six artists. Like the modernist barn structure of the gallery itself, the works had a clean, minimal quality. Janet Rickus showed small, exacting still-life paintings whose compositions are divided horizontally by the tabletop or shelf that holds her props - a grouping of ochre squashes and pears in Boscs and Butternuts (2011) or a simple arrangement of vessels and fruits in Jessie's Yellow Pitcher (2011).
Warner Friedman paints piers and docks set against water, sky, and land, and the unusual shapes of his canvases seem to mimic these built forms. In Eastern Light (2010), the pier structure, lit as if by bright sunlight, has an almost trompe l'oeil quality that makes the painting pop.
Jean-Claude Goldberg's dynamic photorealist canvases often depict containers - a crushed beer can in Hot Summer Night (2007), two squashed plastic bottles in We Got Milk (2006). Gary Komarin works within the tradition of gestural abstraction, sometimes embedding drawn images in his expressive paintings. Suite of Blue Sea, Kit Mandor (2010), with an expansive light-blue area that drips down into an aqua plane, was a highlight.
For pure geometric abstraction, there was Jonathan Perlowsky. Stripes of lacquer cover narrow vertically cut panes of glass in his Lotus (1980-2011), while The Mortician's Daughter (2011) contrasts hard-edged shapes with rose-colored paint smeared over a panel of grainy wood.
In Jonathan Prince's sculpture Water Table (2006), Shanxi black granite was left rough on the outside and smoothed to a bowl-like indentation on the inside. Playing with surface and form, geometry and gesture, the lone sculptor was hardly out of place. Rather, his work pulled together the show's subtly related strands.
