FIRST
Im press
ions
* UPON VISITING Robert Cummings'
EXHIBITION AT THE C.A.M.
by David Fahi
The huge balloon is the first thing you notice. It is overwhelmingly "Untitled," waiting to provide
its own name, I guess. I won't argue with it. It sits there kind of gross, a brown skull/light bulb
shape and three or four bones underneath, sphincter-like ear orifices. The rest of the time I spend
at the show I feel this thing lurking behind me, or overhead, but I really don't want to look at it
nor am I ready to see it floating down Main Street at this year's Thanksgiving Day parade. *
Tony Magar U
A R I
by Doug Blake
New Gallery,
February 12-March 4
Tony Magar's show at New Gallery was beautiful and
elegant, and he wrote an eloquent artist's statement
boot. This is an informed and sophisticated painter!
Magar often places gestural abstraction into a "window
Magar working with his own voice here? We have
deKooning's interwoven rushwork and all-over
composition. The color c ices interact to convey a
eKooning-esque sheen thfs more about light than color.
within a window," as though the images were matted. These en the touch with the pat is close to deKooning's.
"mats" tend to be spatially flat when around images that are Magar ritten th he purpose of art is "to lift the
substantial, and atmospheric around images that are less so. human s chest level." Certainly is work is
This device allows the viewer safe logical distance sensitive an owever, this fellow pai would like
from the work. The painting of the is ed to see Tony Ma how a little less restra d become
from the burden of sustaining the uI expanse of canvas, more of a brawler. What would happen ok off the
However, does the mat effect really contribute something gloves and came out swinging from corner to corner?
meaningful? Or does it merely serve to make each painting
function like a novella that has been puffed up, through Having taken a couple of shots across Magar's bow, it is
oversized type and extra end papers, to present the illusion important to say we see a lot of fashionable work these days
of a novel? Why not let a good small painting be a good by younger artists who mistake smearing around a lot of
small painting? black paint for digging deep. Tony Magar understands that
The painting, Lake that Took a Life to See, proves that when
he is really cooking Magar is very good with paint. But is
two layers of paint are not all there is to painting, which is
quite refreshing a
art i e s RAPID RESPONSES
Rc
