Prada Boxes & Motherboards

If you ever have qualms about throwing away the packaging of a fancy purchase or gift – a belt box from Prada, say, or for the more hardened pack rat, the Styrofoam of a new computer – then you will immediately empathize with the latest body of work from Joe Zucker, where art and storage are integral in pieces that revel in the sense of the neatly contained.Mr. Zucker is what you might call a Minimalist with heart: His art is as pared-down, hard-edged, and concerned with primary structures as any LeWitt or LeVa, but his palette belongs to the nursery. His shapes and their sources entail a whimsical playfulness that belies the graphic austerity of their eventual form.He first came to art-world attention in the 1970s. After a period of relative obscurity,he resurfaced with a series of exhibitions in three New York galleries in 2003. This month, he is presented in contrastive shows that prove his determination not to be pigeonholed. At Paul Kasmin in Chelsea, the aesthetic is strictly constructivist, consisting of neat, near-monochrome box paintings and slightly looser preparatory maquettes. At David Nolan, one large oil painting and a series of watercolors reveal a more painterly and imagistic strain, though one that’s no less punctilious or obsessive.The paintings are made up of repeated elements that recall Leger’s rounded forms, at once flattened and volumetric.They are really rolls of paper or other materials, such as canvas. As – potentially – toilet-paper rolls, they almost ask to be misread as signifiers of anal retentiveness. Some intimate seascapes or toy boats (long a favorite motif of Mr. Zucker’s), while others are more abstract. They have a sense of “handwriting” without being expressive. While they create intriguing rhythms, they are odd, hermetic images that don’t yield much by way of pleasure.More substantial and rewarding are the constructions at Kasmin. Displayed as diptychs on the walls, these are pairs of square or rectangular tray-like structures, in each case with one fractionally smaller than the other, reading like box and lid, both filled with poured-in enamel paint.Within the smaller frame there is a motif built from strips of wood, filled-in with paint in a different color or colors.The motifs, schematically represented, are such basic objects as a stool, a chair, or a table. Each is titled “My Stool,” “My Chair,” “My Table” – the possessive serving to enforce specificity and personality to objects that couldn’t, in actual fact, be more generic. The objects often tilt on a diagonal to maximize the number of edges that touch the frame, emphasizing that the boxes are made to measure and packed for transportation efficiency.While the boxes and objects are cleanly crafted and the monochromatic paint smoothly poured, there are occasional bumps and bubbles; wherever the paint meets a wooden edge, a lapping gives evidence of depth. Mr. Zucker pitches his palette to be neither primary nor earthy: Chocolate browns are a favorite, a perfect color – being at once synthetic and organic – for art that nestles between the specific and the general, the industrial and the personal.The installation at Kasmin Gallery is impressive but forbidding. Pieces are hung fearlessly high on colored walls, and the whole gallery is made to read as one giant graphic. At its project space around the corner,however,some maquettes, made from actual saved boxes, have an exquisite facture that places the work in a completely different register, almost Joseph Cornell-like in their obsessive intimacy. Now you know what to do with those Prada boxes you didn’t have the heart to throw away – send them to Mr. Zucker.***Warren Isensee trained in architecture and graphic design,as no one could fail to detect from his scintillatingly pristine images. He has a sweet tooth, like Mr. Zucker (whose name justifies the taste),both in shape vocabulary and palette. But this new show, his first at Danese, marks a significant shift.Emerging in the mid-1990s, Mr. Isensee seemed to belong to a generation of Pop abstractionists whose nostalgic, ironic art referenced the funky design and psychedelic color schemes of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. His art, at once cool and warm, managed to be sharp and serene in equal measure, achieving a kind of euphoric dumbness.Typically, Mr. Isensee worked with barely touching pebble or kidney shapes in pulsating, all-over abstract designs, and the effect was disarmingly gorgeous.The new work shifts the source from low to high art. Alas, rather like a seesaw, Mr. Isensee is bounced in the corresponding direction. Where he once looked down at his kitsch quarry, the art of the past now looks down at his frankly enfeebled derivations. By coincidence, his current show overlaps with a historic display of 1960s stripe paintings by Gene Davis at Charles Cowles next door, whose authority and freshness make Mr. Isensee’s riffs on color field seem mere impertinences.This isn’t to say there aren’t delights to be had in Mr. Isensee’s new body of work. “Mindfield” (2002-03), an allover, wallpaper-like composition of just-touching motifs, is exhilarating in its dense depth of scale organization. “Double Division” (2005), a tight grid of interlocking L-shapes in bands of color, manages to hint at things in the real world – Bento boxes or motherboards – while retaining an essential abstractness. For that, and its intrinsic beauty, it is a remarkable work.***Fun, funky skill akin to the best in Messrs. Isensee and Zucker abounds in the exquisite poured paintings of Carolanna Parlato, on show at the Phatory, an offbeat East Village gallery. Made up of poured shapes, punctured like doughnuts, discretely layered in thick, glutinous, glossy acrylics of mouthwatering, brashly contrastive hues, her images constitute bravura collisions of chance and control. They look like stacks of Ellsworth Kellys that have melted but somehow retained crisp edges and clean color. There are also hints of Inka Essenhigh’s high-jinks anime. This is a must-see little show, but be warned that the gallery opens weekends and evenings only – as befits its locale.Zucker until February 11 (Kasmin: 293 Tenth Avenue and 511 W.27th Street, 212-563-4474; Nolan: 560 Broadway at Prince Street, 212-925-6190). Prices: $4,000-$56,000.Isensee until February 11 (535 W. 24th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-223-2227). Prices: $5,000-$25,000.Parlato through February 12 (618 E. 9th Street,between Avenues B and C,212-777-7922). Prices: $1,000-$4,200.

Prada Boxes & Motherboards

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