New artists swing to expressionism

Leslie Judd Ahlander
The Miami News
Friday, August 19, 1983

Each year at this time the Gillman Gallery puts on exhibits of new young artists it has discovered during the past season. At present there is an interesting and diversified group from New York and Florida that is well worth a visit. In September the gallery will show young artists from Gainesville in an all-Florida talent show.

Dominating the current show is a huge, six-part mural painting by Florida artist Jeffrey Whipple called "The Rape of Death." The figurative work depicts a complex interaction of people and objects that is a mordant comment on American life. The figures are literally bombarded by hundreds of the objects that make up the American nightmare of uncertain peace and material plenty. The people move across a hot pink, freely textured background in various rites of birth, love and death (parental guidance suggested).

In contrast is a series of loosely brushed abstractions in warm colors indicative of the return to expressionist painting prevalent In New York as well as in Florida. Outstanding among them are Ron Jones' deeply toned abstraction, and works by Wayne Amadee, light and lively; Jonas Gerard, combining a grid with overlays of loosely brushed color; and Geoffrey Lardiere, an elegant abstraction with free gestures of color on white. Martha Feldman shows a large wall hanging in subdued colors, restrained and handsome, with abstract forms in somber tones against a beige background laced with gold. Susan Copley's hanging canvas, thickly painted, appears to be a tapestry at first glance but is in fact a heavily textured patterning of dark tones.

Several of the works are too decorative to be of great interest. John Gurbacs' delicate patterning of tree branches against a soft rose background might work better as a screen or room divider than as a painting. Stephen Koim's stained aluminum wall construction lacks the cohesion and tension that would give it validity. It seems too soft and pretty to be made of aluminum, creating a contradiction between medium and form that is not resolved. He would do well to study Frank Stella's work.

It is interesting to observe that among the young painters here, all have espoused a form of abstract expressionism after more than a decade of the severely geometric flat painting that dominated the art world. In this they mirror the swings between classicism and expressionism that have dominated the art world for centuries, from the classicism of the Renaissance to the emotionalism of the Baroque, the restraint of Ingres to the romanticism of Delacroix, the optical research of the Impressionists to the wild colors and arbitrary forms of the Fauves, each reacting to the other through the years.

Leslie Judd Ahlander was art critic of the Washington Post for 13 years, twice winning the Art Critics Award of the College Art Association for critical writing. Miami News art critic Paula Harper is on vacation.

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