KAREN WILKIN
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against denser strokes and broader swipes, but too often, he seemed to
rely on a programmed set of "moves." The pictures got weaker with
longer viewing. (Admittedly, I am also basing this impression on work
seen elsewhere than at the two shows.)
In genera l, the work simply didn't support the claims made for it. As
a group, these pictures are extraordinarily cold, technically facile, and
opaque - the very qualities that their authors and their supporters at–
tribute to the earlier abstraction that they reject. Leaving aside the con–
siderable qualitative differences between the current painters and their
predecessors, for the sake of argument only, it is clear that the much–
vaunted distinction between the
Tellla Celeste
group's work and other
abstraction is purely ideological. But if you can't see it, is it there? It may
be simpleminded of me, but I expect to see evidence of what art is about
in the art itself, not to find out what [ am looking at by reading a
trendy magazine.
Although the exhibitions at Good and Janis and the special issue of
rellla Celeste
purported to bring us news of an international phe–
nomenon, there is evidence that there's another side
to
the story. An
October exhibition at Zurcher Gallery in Paris by Bruno Rousse[ot, a
young French painter now resident in New York, explored a rarified
kind of geometric abstraction at once famil iar and, in Rousselot's hands,
utterly individual. The present series rings changes on a " labyrinth" im–
age, a jagged line that cuts across the canvas, angling back on itself but
never touching the edges of the picture and never intercepting itself. At
first, one assumes that the image remains constant from picture to pic–
ture, despite variations in size, proportion, and color, but in fact, the
bold zig- zag line is as subject to radical alteration as any other element.
Its width, the proportion of its angles, the way it traces its path all vary,
now subtly, now dramatically, from painting to painting. Rousselot
keeps confounding our expectations . He has consciously and deliberately
restricted his means but that has only heightened his ability to invent. [n
his best works, the labyrinth line does not isolate itself as a figure on an
uninflected ground but carves out areas of unstable space. [n part, this is a
function of drawing and shape, but it is even more dependent on color.
Rousselot is a master of the unnameable: reds that become purples as you
look, blacks that turn into greens or silver grays, grays that turn brown
or blue before your eyes. [t takes time for the eye to adj ust to these in–
finitely subtle nuances, but once you tune into Rousse!ot's world of
close-valued, mysterious hues, his pictures come fully to life, bespeaking a
minimalist sensibility that barely conceals great sensuality.
Manel Lledos, a young Barcelona painter, showed recent work in
October and November at Galeria Joan Prats, New York. Lledos, like
Rousselot, is very mllch part of a tradition, in Lledos's case a kind of
