For many artists, the surface on which one paints is a support to which to apply pigment, nothing more. It plays a much more significant role, however, in the work of Lalevga, a painter from Germany, whose work is on view at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from January 2 through 23, with a reception on Thursday, January 4, from 6 to 8 PM.
    Working in acrylic on wood, Lalevga not only paints upon but carves and scores into the surface, turning the panel into a tactile arena bearing the alternately rough and elegant scars of many moods. Often several panels are in progress simultaneously, evolving over “days, weeks, months, sometimes years,” as the artist puts it, until each reaches its natural conclusion.
    The culmination of all this unceasing effort can be seen in the glowing examples of Lalevga's work at Agora Gallery, which run the gamut from almost minimalist austerity of all-over, single color compositions such as “XIX” and “XVIII,” to more chromatically variegated acrylics on wood like “XI” and “XIII,” their richly scumbled surfaces revealing an infinite range of primary and secondary colors, texturally enriched by the various scores, scratches, and other “injuries” that the artist selectively inflicts on their wooden surfaces.
   Lalevga's practice of affixing Roman numerals to these paintings rather than titles serves the purpose of keeping their origins and meanings mysterious and open-ended. Thus the viewer is free to experience them from his or her own perspective and to draw whatever conclusions might arrive accordingly. This seems very much in harmony with the intuitive origins of the compositions, which are process-oriented, with the different panels or “plates” revealing their hidden mysteries to the artist gradually, over the often protracted periods of their gestation and creation.
   Some of the most intriguing of Lalevga's paintings are those that coalesce into more or less specific, albeit abstract images, as seen in “XII,” where the central image is an almost-but-not quite cruciform, containing tactile yellow strokes at its center, and enclosed by thick black, white, and red outlines of even width. Here, the narrow vertical format that the artist favors further enhances the stately quality of the image, adding to its iconic suggestiveness.
   Another intriguing symbol, seen in the work identified as “VII,” is a central rectangle intersected by a single bar or stripe that divides the tall panel from top to bottom. These two joined elements, boldly laid down with a bold  brush in a fleshy pinkish hue, are set against a ground of deep blue mediated by vigorously brushed areas of yellow. By contrast, another painting called “X” is a veritable extravaganza of bold, tactile strokes of red blue and yellow overlapping with swerving rhythms akin to those of Brice Marden. Here, too, there is even a suggestion of two tiny silhouetted figures resembling African sculptures at the center of the composition.
   However, this could be purely in the eye of the beholder, for the great pleasure of Lalevga's paintings is in discovering one's own meanings in the remarkable variety of forms and colors that reveal themselves to the incessant stroking and probing of this immensely gifted artist.

-- Marie R. Pagano