KAREN W I LKIN
125
a surpri se. So was, fo r w ho ll y di ffe rent reasons, Peter Acheson's
Tree at th e
7()P
(!f
the 11Iorld,
whi ch flirted w ith a good many present day cl iches-th e
childlike image, tin y size, crude paint appli cati o n- but somehow managed
to be personal and convin cing, largel y because o f its inventive shapes . At th e
oth er end of the spectrum fi'om Acheson' s deliberately ro ugh
Ii
ttl e pi cture
was Hiroshi Sug ito's large, suave, pas tel - to ned canvas punctuated w ith frag–
il e pencil drawing. The in cipi ent swee tn ess of th e pi cture was subverted by
its spatial impli ca ti o ns-a fl attened proscenium- like encl os ure with swoop–
ing o range curta ins-and its oddball , albeit rather familiar pro tago ni st-a
clunky, o ne-eyed mo ns ter cross-bred fi'om late Gusto n and the comi cs.
Happily, the deli cacy ofSug ito's to uch and th e elegance of hi s washes com–
pensa ted fo r th e sli ght predi ctabili ty of hi s imagery.
A live alld Well
was a
useful survey, but because each participant was represented by a single work ,
it was also fi·ustratin g. Fo rtunatel y, I'm told that there will be oppo rtuni ti es
to see mo re of w hat some o f th ese promi sin g young arti sts can do at
Eli zabeth Harris as th e season progresses.
It was probably fo rtui to us, but provocative, that
A live alld Well
over–
lapped w ith Thomas N ozkowski 's show of recent paintin gs at Max Pro tech,
since Nozkowski 's cranky, th o ughtful pi ctures are models of the kind o f
pictor ial inquiry to w hi ch many of today's yo unger painters-including
many in the Eli zabeth H arri s show-aspire. H e seems to strive to redu ce
painting to its mos t fund amental compo nents with o ut j etti soning com–
pl etely th e narrative o r spati al allusio ns di sca rded by ea rl y moderni slll .
Nozkows ki has no sin gle way of makin g a pi cture, no single conceptio n o f
how pi cto ri al space fun cti o ns , and apparently , no limit to the ambi guo us
confi gurati o ns he di still s from a hos t o f sources, ye t in spite o f all these pos–
sibl e va ri abl es, hi s cl enched, den sely-s tro ked paintings remain di stincti ve;
hi s ri goro us pi cto ri al intelli ge nce always comes through. I was mos t struck
by a we ird pi cture o f a wooll y, white, saddl e- like shape, fl oatin g aga ins t a
lumin o us gro und and anchored by multi colo red strokes. Th e effect was
rather like o ne of those vivid , decontextu ali zed childhood memo ri es-an
image sea red into o ne's consc io usness witho ut being understood at the
time, still po tent but di sto rted in scale and mea nin g because o f th at b ck o f
understandi ng .
Uptown , at Jason McCoy, C ora Cohen's recent paintin gs ann o un ced
the robust condition of a quite diffe rent conception o f pi cture-making.
I've been inte res ted fo r some time in Cohen's curi o us amalgam o f detac h–
men t and passio nate convicti o n in her stain ed and spl as hed canvases. O ften
it seems th at she has di scovered , rath e r th an will ed , he r pi ctures. The mos t
extreme can read simpl y as artif;lcts of her process: un censored embl ems o f
th e stud io, w hi ch at the same time revel in the flui dity and seducti veness of
paint- Frankenthale r w ith pos tmode rn iro ny, I suppose. At McCoy, I
