Michael GoldbergA large group of wonderfully varied drawings from the last 10 years of this under-acclaimed staple of the NY art scene is now up. Paying attention to the dates inscribed, a move through four various phases can be detected but this is hardly the point and the show is, tastefully, hung out of any chronological sequence so as to de-emphasize this and to focus our attention to the works themselves. The bright sunlight of Italy (near Sienna) where many of these pieces were executed, gets transferred to the work in the radiance and joy of the brilliant colors used, which beam from the white gallery walls. The 24 pieces on porous papers are done with oil stick, oils, watercolor and pencil. Though in a few a mountain landscape is discernible, it is the abstraction of the form that the artist is emphasizing. The mountain shape gets framed in a series of thick, brash lines from which arc, triangle and trapezoidal boxes emanate to form pure color fields surrounding the mountain. It is possible to infer in some others a more abstract suggestion of a mountain landscape with a sky of washed color, a ground of dark mixed colors and black jagged lines and a mid-range from which a brighter handled series of colors arise. It is the handling of the paint and shaping of color and charged drawing of the lines that's essential here. These are abstract paintings. He's not merely as concerned with depicting a scene as he is in using it as the catalyst for the making of a drawing. You can call the works abstract-impressionist. Essentially, most of the works are composed of layers and layers of many colored swirls (applied as quick and loose as a good sax solo), pastel-like cloud-fields of broad-stroked swirls, and the high contrast use of the negative space of unused sections of paper that frame the central workings and/or permeate through it so no illusions about depth are promulgated. It is a disciplined expression where the improvisatory nature of the technique never gets away from the creator. How a series of squiggly lines with dashes of color here and there and wash effects become transformed by a master into something wondrous is a mystery. We can only gaze at these inventions and feel the transfer of the artist's kinetic energy and get the surefootedness derived from their balance. If, with the use of dabs and slight swirls of color in a negative space, the middle Guston abstract paintings are evoked, it is certainly not a nostalgic or worn application. Goldberg's colors are much brighter and more fun than those great contemplative Gustons. These are more purely about painting and joyous expression than the Gustons which forged the territory so had to expose their self-consciousness. We've passed through 35 years now of abstract expressionism — consciousness given visual shape. Michael Goldberg has been there from the beginning and with this show he proves that there's still plenty of territory to invent. |