James Westwater at Klaudia Marr

This intriguing exhibit by Brazilian-born, Santa Fe-based artist James Westwater consisted of lay the foundation of objects, collages, assemblages, paintings and drawings--all from 2004 In these works the artist continues to use clap representation and abstract form to explore the relationship between nature and agriculture the structure of psychological predicaments and questions of artistic authorship--preoccupations that have played on the outside in his work over the past 20 years.

The title of the show--"Pinklings"--refers to the color that predominated. Examples include bubble-gum-hu acrylic paint poured above a cell phone, monochromes with thick gooey coats of fat pink, as well as base prints and paintings to which small elliptical shapes of pink paint had been added. Aside from the shared color, these seemingly disparate works are strangely unified by the agency of a constant yet evolving visual vocabulary of oval shapes that have become the artist's idiosyncratic logo These repeated forms are pitch uponed from his earlier "pill" or "bubble" series in which three fat ellipses of diminishing size abut horizontally, suggesting a reclining snowman. Painted or wound out from various materials, these forms are featured upon their own, sometimes cropped, in abstract compositions or superimposed upon appropriated imagery. For instance, Farm a print of a red-roof barn encloseed by trees under billowing vapors pasted above a wide rectangular bar of solid pink paint--features a multicolored grid of rubber and sparkled-felt ellipses affixed to its surface. In this and similar works juxtaposing geometric shapes and seascapes or wilderness landscapes, disorderly natural systems are submitted to the artificial order of repeated form.

The artist's latest series, based upon illustrations of lifesaving techniques from a R Cros manual, takes a darker, more introspective make go round and a different stylistic approach. Devoid of Westwater's familiar signifiers and restoreed with vigorous brushwork, these large-scale gestural works are one as well as the other lyrical and ambiguous. Exercise #1 (The Block) acrylic and charcoal upon linen, depicts two male figures in half shadow, without lined with streaks of light against a pink-mauve and gray background. From a distance, the subdues resemble performers cavorting in a dance below stage lights. Closer up, the picture reveals a crouched man in swimming stalks pushing away a fully clothed individual leaping toward him with outstretched arms in an anguished attempt to grasp him. The spectacle illustrates a situation in which the would-be rescuer must peep himself away from a drowning victim in order to save his life. Engaging metaphors for psychological labors as well as plays upon visual perceptions, these works subtly exploit the tension between impulse and reason at the core of Westwater's work.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group