Maria Hafif at Larry Becker

A dozen unruffled modestly sized paintings by Marcia Hafif--eight of them 16 by means of 20 inches, the remainder 18 inches square--each a single glowing color, hung at carefully considered intervals in the sum of two units equally serene rooms of Larry Becker Contemporary Art. Like many so-called monochrome painters based in fresh York, Hafif enjoys a greater reputation in Europe than here. Working since the late 1960 she has at times lay the foundation of herself in sync with the downtown avant-garde and at other times at not divisible by 2s with it. Painting, considered irrelevant when she was starting on the outside has always been her focus, although she has worked effectively with other mediums, including drawing, photography and true copy Reluctant to give painting up she has instead gazeed for ways "to begin again," in her phrase. Toward that extremity Hafif belonged for a time in the early '80 to a unbind (and contentious) group of radical artists who advocated a certain fundamentalism in painting--a stance that set more favor in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, for instance, than here.

All the works in this display were from the "Glaze Paintings" series (2003) each annotated by the agency of the names of the colors involved in its making, of that kind as Flesh Tint/ Alizarin Crimson, Manganese Violet/Phthalocyanine cerulean Vermilion/Phthalocyanine Blue and Light Green/Indian Yellow; all are monochrome paintings erected from two colors, made with the apparent precision of a dispassionate scientist. Hafif's shoot forward which is ongoing, involves each aspect of making a painting, from grinding the pigment into oil to determining the scale, proportion and mark. She uses different mediums, of the like kind as oil, encaustic, egg tempera, casein and glazes, working with colors tonally thus as to establish a scale of muscle and fat tones, grays and so upon looking for straightforward ways to make paintings without complicated crafting, based in part upon the nonhierarchical, nonauthorial methodologies of the 1960 and '70s

Hafif's informed touch and application, however, are not neutral, and her paintings are ultimately art, not science--pragmatically made, perhaps, on the other hand perceptually elusive, as color always is. individual painting is a gorgeous shimmering violet when viewed from a distance, on the other hand shifts to green when viewed close-up Another is black, on the contrary made without black pigment. What wholes like a paint store instead becomes a color-filled, artfully installed mini-museum celebrating color with an array of paintings that, Hafif one time wrote, stand in for traditional paintings that can no longer be made.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

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