A veritable plethora of representational and abstract approaches are seen in ³Collective Exhibition,² at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from April 10 through May 1. (Reception: Thursday April 12, 6 to 8 PM).
Among the more unorthodox works are Michael Martino¹s images of animal and botanical shapes on panels. A simplified silhouette of a duck or an oak leaf takes on iconic status in Martino¹s unique formal lexicon. Whether painting a portrait or a landscape, the Mexican artist H. Ramirez displays an innate chromatic sensitivity. Perhaps Ramirez¹s background in holistic medicine contributes to the soothing energy his compositions seem to exude.
Bente Stamp, an artist from Denmark enamored of Africa, lends the black and white stripes of a Zebra an impact akin to Brigit Riley¹s optical abstractions. Stamp also demonstrates that she can project a sense of raw power with a frontal view of a charging rhinoceros set against a vigorously gestural red background. Male prototypes are an iconic presence in the paintings of Antoine Toniolo, who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Apparently, growing up as the son of a professional boxer has given Toniolo an uncanny ability to probe the macho mystique in portraits such as ³Shooter² and ³Producer.² Quite an opposite mystique comes to the forefront in Patricia Valencia Carstens¹s monochromatic paintings of glamorous women in lowcut evening gowns emerging from dark grounds. Yet some of Carstens¹s other works have been likened to both Monet and the Abstract Expressionists for their luminous colors and vibrant brushwork.
Montreal painter Laurie Michelle Kader has her own dynamic approach to color, in bold compositions that could appear abstract until one realizes that they are actually based on x-rays and digital images of the human body. Kader has transformed her own experience with illness into an emotional and spiritual triumph in these superbly realized works in a combination of oil glazing and egg tempera. Another highly subjective approach informs the paintings of the American artist Susan Kaufman, with their fiery hues and flowing shapes. Striving to convey her inner and outer perceptions, Kaufman achieves a successful synthesis by virtue of her
combination of gestural grace and coloristic adventurousness.
Paradoxically, Ambiorix Santos, an artist from the Dominican Republic now living in the U.S. employs emphatically material means to explore the indigenous spirituality of South America¹s ³Taino² culture. Mixing sawdust, paper, plastic or metals with oil textures, Santos creates emblematic compositions which merge ancient symbolism with contemporary aesthetics.
Mississippi artist Cliff Speaks creates intricate, brilliantly colorful paintings akin to those of Jackson Pollock for their compositional thrust. However, Speaks, who sees painting as ³ a temporary conclusion to an ongoing idea,² combines a process-oriented approach with semi-abstract musical imagery to push the ethos of abstract expressionism into the postmodern present. By contrast, spare linear elements engage the eye in a rhythmic visual dance in the exuberant compositions of Ivan Hilliard Vincent, who studied math and drafting in England but is mostly self-taught as a painter. Now living in Ontario, Vincent complements his animated line with color harmonies at once elegant and subtle.
Germany-born North Carolinian Regine Bloch employs a wide range of materials in her inventive, humanistic sculptures. Working with clay, driftwood, porcelain,wire, and apparently anything else that strikes her fancy, Bloch brings impressive verve and wit to her figurative subjects. Norma RGF employs color so intrepidly that one is tempted to term her a latter-day Fauve. However, RGF also brings a narrative quality and an eye for the telling detail to bear in her affecting paintings of a group of women in red hats or a Native American basket weaver that sets her apart from historical precedents as a highly individual observer of the human condition.