Refilling the Picture Plane

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The New York Sun

Over the past three decades, Jonathan Lasker has invented and refined a distinct style of abstract painting, which he conceived as a response to minimalism and what he considered the emptying out of the picture plane. Early on, one of his goals was to make an abstract painting that could be viewed literally, while simultaneously containing characteristics that belonged to earlier generations of painting such as metaphor, pictorialism, and some components of narrative.

Mr. Lasker’s achievement has been made with the essentials of figure, ground, and line, and by balancing fundamental elements of abstraction with aspects of the observable world. And, in the current exhibition with Cheim & Read, he is creating work at the top of his game.

The show contains seven heroically scaled paintings and their seven small studies. These colorrich works have varying degrees of resonance with landscape, interior, and portraiture. “The Quotidian and the Question” (2007) suggests a landscape in which the entire ground is painted with a pattern-field of narrow looping lines. The application of paint is thin; the stroke appears consistent and slow. A thickly painted linear, plantlike form is on the right side of the painting, opposite a solid yellow form that sits directly in front of a scribbly darker form. These forms are set in a magentacolored zone and rest on a horizon line. The lower third is divided into irregularly shaped, interlocking blocks of green, brown, and orange. The result is a visceral and witty clutter within which larger familial forms are poised to interact.

Mr. Lasker’s carefully chosen forms are primarily abstract and trigger associations with archetypal forms such as a figure, a head, or a face in profile. They propose a unique sense of narrative, not one borrowed from art history but one constructed by the artist, to be completed by the viewer.

Mr. Lasker is verbally and visually expressive about the many ways paintings can be read. And to his credit, the work joyfully reflects his belief in the ongoing creative possibilities of painting.

***

Rebecca Smith’s modestly scaled “Blue Cage” sculptures are a counterpoint to Mr. Lasker’s heroically scaled paintings, yet they share conceptual and aesthetic considerations.

Ms. Smith’s nine sculptures are currently installed on the immaculate walls of Jeannie Freilich’s gallery. The works range in size between 17 by 15 by 1 1/4 inches and 62 by 84 by 9 inches, and are assembled from 1-and- 1/2-inch-wide flat steel bars. Each piece is painted in a different monochrome shade of blue and titled after glaciers. Ms. Smith attached the work to the middle and upper portions of the walls, where the lighting increases the role of the cast shadows’ interplay with the steel lines.

The sculptures share a grid-like “window guard” structure at the base, that appears to have morphed and changed with each work. The diagrammatic nature of the work recalls urban street plans, architectural framework, glyphs, crosses, stick figures, and so on, but they resist single fixed identities. Careful viewing allows us to follow a seemingly playful working process, where no-fuss welds join this length here and that one there, lending the work a refreshing journeyman-like quality.

“Sarachal Glacier, Iran” (2006) is a bright, sky blue grid, whose overall triangular shape recalls a fragmented urban plan or layers of stylized Arabic characters. What at first appear to be few elemental moves and material manipulations are in fact, many carefully orchestrated decisions. Ms. Smith constructs interwoven grids, adding a short length of steel here, or a long twist there. It’s easy to overlook the individual choices, because it all feels necessary.

Ms. Smith’s work is apparently abstract, but her motivations and concerns seem to come right out of our messy world. With their glacial titles, these works can be seen as core samples taken from the earth and examined under a powerful lens, where each microcosm remains tense with beauty.

Lasker until May 5 (547 W. 25th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-242-7727);

Smith until April 28 (22 E. 72nd St., between Fifth and Madison avenues, 212-794-5220).


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