DAVID GIBSON WRITING

The artist’s attempt to define the ineffable qualities that quantify humanness often result in the construction of effigies closely resembling human appearance. How that artist in question achieves his specific effigy dictates the parameters of his intent. In the case of Emil Alzamora we are presented with two recent series: nearly life size ones with a metallic exterior broken up by striated fissures, like those appearing after an earthquake, titled ‘The Initiates’; and miniature ones that have a molten or melted appearance, under the rubric of ‘Supernumerary.’ Both series play off our reasonable expectation that human forms would naturally take an expressiveness of cerebral repose or narrative energy, yet their fabrication hints at forces far greater than organic life itself—the raging furnace inside planets and stars…the dynamo of creation at work.   THE INITIATES reference an accrual of presences that are unusual in traditional representational sculpture. They attain

THE WHITE TRIANGLE (2017) Oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches My reaction to certain kinds of art is sometimes, even unknown to me, historically circumscribed. I see a certain kind of painterly construction and my response is an echo of the same response I had ten years or more ago, when I witnessed a similar image in a gallery or museum setting. Perhaps I now bring to it a greater range of echoes, and over time I develop new language to enrich and aggrandize the nature of my experience. The paintings of Eric Brown fall into this category. His recent solo exhibition, Punctuate, on view at Theodore Art in Bushwick, was a quiet revelation. These overly simple works use color and gaps in space to create subtle tensions. His use of titles expands their impact as metaphors for the human experience, which can be dramatized and quantified with so little apparent industry. Take “The White Triangle” for instance (all works 2017). This painting involves the use of three ar

  SANDRA GOTTLIEB Idiosyncrasy is the hallmark of the creative individual, who not only refuses to be limited by critical bias or historical convention, but remains devoted to the idea that drove them in the first place, no matter where it first originated. One can see in the artists of Free Form Five, curated by D. Dominick Lombardi, a dedication to the rigor of their craft. One is easily drawn toward their individual aesthetic world views, which in   a group format, proves a strong impulse constantly evading easy definition. Each of the artists participating in this exhibition has a long established practice of maintaining a level of order that evolves their vision and simultaneously critiques a main convention of art. New histories emerge from their work to qualify and inform future generations. As a photographer who chooses to eschew the human as a subject, Sandra Gottlieb turns instead to nature though not in any decorative or pedestrian fashion. Her relationship to nature a

I had a studio visit on May 9 th with Keiko Narahashi, whose work was part of my exhibition at The Educational Alliance Gallery in 2004, an exploration of cubes and grids titled SQUARED. I was curious as to what she’d been up to, and contacted her on her web site. It was great to see her and catch up. She had a little bit of everything from her creative history on view, so I was able to consider her growth. There had been a lot of it. I can’t speak to all the growth, but can give you a snapshot of a few of the moves she has made.   Narahashi is still a sculptor, though she has moved through more traditional modes of expression like ceramics, from the painted canvas constructions I saw before. Those were experimental and were a movement away from painting. There is still a strong color element in her work but it operates in concert with a very fragile quality of form, to the degree that it seems most ephemeral. Only in her most recent work is the painterliness returning.

  The artist is a natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making, developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society.   The voyage of the artist is, less and less, a pure exploration of ideas as form

The artist is a natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making, developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society.   The voyage of the artist is, less and less, a pure exploration of ide