Cozy, Playful & Disciplined

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The New York Sun

Kyle Staver’s lush paintings of domestic scenes have always been seductive – perhaps too seductive when her drawing has been less disciplined than her exquisite color. But in her latest work at Lohin Geduld, the arabesque of her line has found a rigor to match. The results can be stunning.


Ms. Staver borrows not only the themes of Bonnard and Matisse, but also their strategy: Seek a promising scenario of illumination – the glimmer of shadowed porcelain within a bright bathroom, the window opening onto super-charged, outdoor light – and push colors and forms to their maximum pictorial logic.This Ms. Staver does, with a comprehension and intensity that belies the coziness of her imagery.


In “Wednesday’s Paper” (2004), the artist brusquely summarizes a bedroom with a sleeping male figure. Modulated brown-grays of walls and floor are enough to give weight to the contained space, and a few notes – purple slippers at mid-floor, pictures on a wall – measure out its expanse. This is just a portion of a larger scenario: Viewed through a doorway, the figure’s strong horizontals vie with the softer verticals and the more suffused illumination of a foreground room. Compressed beneath the doorway, a busy, dark patterning of rug, chair, and newspaper spread across the canvas’s lowest section. From it rise the broad planes of a seated female figure. Backlit by the illumination from the window behind, the female figure’s pale skin tones turn deep pink, acquiring a delicate, earthy massiveness.


At the meeting of figure, floor, and doorway, there appears yet another gambit, and a new kind of illumination: the vibrant blue-turquoise gleam of an aquarium whose top just presses into the pale frame of the doorway. It’s a final, critical punctuation in the rhythms that gather and shift, turning a scene of domestic pleasures into an excuse for restless improvisation.


Ms. Staver’s command of color has always imparted a luminous movement to her images.What is striking about paintings like “Wednesday’s Paper” is the purposefulness and complexity with which her drawing now directs these impulses. One can nitpick; in a painting like “James’ Red Sail” (2005), the forms seesaw a little, approximating rather than nailing locations. But Ms. Staver is in top form in most of the dozen pieces in the exhibition. “Morning Bath” (2004), with its background verticals staunched by a ponderous bather in a tub – and a single, goofy hand, rising like a periscope – is a delight. Among the works are several monotype portraits, simpler and more intimate, but animated by the same restive attack.


In some contemporary painting, color is delivered as a separate, cerebral sensation. (Think of the bright but static color patterns of Damien Hirst’s “spot” paintings.) For the next couple of weeks at Lohin Geduld, gallery-goers can enjoy another experience: the urging of countless, diverse impulses into an intuitive order. Rarely does rigor seem so playful.


***


Langdon Quin’s subjects – carefully posed figures, Umbrian hillsides dotted with farmhouses – are the very stuff of tradition. His keen observational and rendering skills,however,impart a robust originality to the 15 works currently at Kraushaar Galleries.


“Models, an Allegory of Faith” (2005) depicts a studio scene with a seated nude model and another, clothed woman at work in the background. (Is the small dog at the model’s feet part of the allegory? The artist’s intentions remain beguilingly private.) Vivid colors and crisp contours impart a luminous order to this canvas and two studies for it. Mr. Quin knows how to get mileage out of the subtlest of details; the shadow at one edge of a lip, or the cleft between index and middle fingers suffice to convey the complexity of a entire mouth or hand. Fine gradations of sienna and umber give a rich accounting of his figures’ volumes.


Several landscapes are just as richly atmospheric. In the painting “Parish” (2004), Mr. Quin captures with wondrous economy the weight of sunlight on a stack of hay bales. A mere two hues – a light khaki-green and a subdued shade of lime – become the feathery, billowing canopies of trees. Bare shifts of off-whites neatly describe the facets of a distant building.


The figures’ hieratic poses suggest Piero della Francesca, whose “Madonna del Parto”appears as a poster on the back wall of the “Models” paintings. The influence of Balthus is even more apparent in the angular disposition of chair legs and the compact tapering of legs and feet.


Piero and Balthus are formidable models, and these borrowed motifs tend to highlight Mr. Quin’s somewhat less momentous pacing of rhythms. Mr. Quin doesn’t always pace his color with Balthus’s heft: The interval from hay bales to houses in “Parish” lacks Balthus’s expansiveness of color, while the forms in “Still Life With Model’s Chair” (2004) circulate a bit indifferently.


The objects in the strange, meditative “Still Life With Senses” (2004), however, hold with complete conviction. And in “Models” there are truly brilliant passages: Check out the accelerating contours of the figure’s leg as it hovers and then surges from the dog’s coiled mass. In both the preparatory studies and the final painting, this bit of masterful invention feels spontaneous, and entirely the artist’s own.


Staver until February 4 (531 W. 25th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-675-2656). Prices: $2,000-$8,000. Quin until February 11 (724 Fifth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets, 212-307-5730). Prices: $1,200-$12,000.


The New York Sun

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