The New York Sun
Anniversary
April 05, 2007
March 20, 2007 April 14, 2007
A Taste for Nonconformity by Maureen Mullarkey Collectors travel in schools, Robert Hughes said, like bluefish. But connoisseurs—a very different species—make their singular way to Lori Bookstein Fine Art.
Online Exhibition Review Press Release
It has been 10 years since Ms. Bookstein left Salander O'Reilly to open a gallery under her own name. This anniversary exhibition illustrates why the gallery has become a resource for everyone who cares about the practice of painting, drawing, and sculpture without regard to market trends. Ms. Bookstein shares with the late Allan Stone a taste for gifted nonconformity. Ken Kewley, Irving Kriesberg, Henry Rothman (d. 1990), Varujan Boghosian, and sculptor Louise Kruger are sui generis, true originals whose creative intuitions breathe life into art at a time when it is becoming just another mass product. Ms. Kruger's c.v. holds the clue to her unorthodox charm. "Apprenticed with Captain Sundquist, shipbuilder" substitutes for the usual academic affidavits. Her "Bust of a Lady" (c. 1968) is a roughhewn riff on a Renaissance noblewoman with delicately carved lips worthy of Clara Bow. (Watch for Ms. Kruger's solo show in May.) Mr. Kriesberg's "Flame" (1960) is a painting in four individual quadrants mounted on two steel dowels. Viewers can swivel any combination of doublesided quarters to achieve 16 distinct but harmonious variations on the original theme. The shower of calibrated color shingles in Mr. Kewley's collage "Bather Arranging Her Hair (After Renoir)" (2005) place him at the heart of the gallery's founding interest: the coloristic legacy of Hans Hofmann. He is in good company with Louis Finkelstein's 1992 pastel of color notes and Paul Resika's recent, vivacious abstraction that skims the edge of representation.
John Dubrow's "Union Square III" (2005–06) reexamines the structure of a previous treatment of a favorite urban motif. He uses color, as fine painters do, to amplify the texture of things and suggest the sculptural reality of simplified forms no less than the quality of light. The rigor of his color chords marks him as one of the most discerning contemporary painters. The juxtapositions on view are striking and fertile. Willard Boepple's horizontal sculpture sits near Janet Malcolm's collage, echoing its darksome, disappearing angles. A paint encrusted Crucifixion by Gandy Brodie (d. 1975) hangs next to Bruce Gagnier's current variation on the theme: a slim, twisted cry of anguish. It is an inspired Lenten pairing. David Park's 1953 profile portrait of his wife converses with Mr. Dubrow's Bay Area inclinations and Robert De Niro Sr.'s early—and delicious—"Still Life with Greek Head" (1951). A female head (c. 1929), elongated and a bit dotty, by Albert Maurer seems to recognize itself in Ms. Kruger's sculpted bust. Only Eve Aschheim's near monochrome white painting seems out of sync with the visual generosity characteristic of the gallery. Its aggressive minimalism begrudges the viewer anything to look at. But then, the gallery has included surprises since it opened. There is not enough column space for everything worth noting in this medley of contemporary work and earlier modern ones. Names have to suffice: Jan Müller, Marsden Hartley, Rosemarie Beck, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthíasdóttir (including an uncommon plaster female bust), Tine Lundsfryd, Susannah Phillips, Wendy Mark, Anne Tabachnick, Garth Evans, Aristodimos Kaldis, Walker Buckner, Jolie Stahl, and Jonathan Silver. Lori Bookstein Fine Art | 37 West 57th Street 3rd floor | New York NY 10019 | 212.750.0949 | info@loribooksteinfineart.com