Robert Cottingham at Forum and Dieu Donne Papermill

In his latest exhibit at Forum, Robert Cottingham depicted a favorite make subordinate manual typewriters, in seven watercolors and gouaches, sum of two units graphite drawings on vellum and five large (as high as 7 feet) oil paintings upon canvas--three years' work. Downstairs were six large (60-by-40-inch) paper-pulp paintings, a series, "Components" (2003) showing cropp and rotated machine parts, which Cottingham produc last year in a 12-day stint at Dieu Donne Papermill. More were upon view at the Mill itself.

Cottingham deliberately pick outs ordinary manual typewriters of the sort that were in wide circulation from the First World War from one side the mid-20th century--"tools of the Everyman," as he has called them. notwithstanding that there is a generic similarity among them, Cettingham gives each the particularity of human physiognomy. The views are methodically station up with variety in mind: a close-up that fills the entire frame in an elegantly hieratic geometry with the fanning 1 of the type basket framed above and below by the agency of the horizontals of keys and carriage (Jane's Remington Close-up 2003); or an overhead of the same machine tilted slightly off-axis, with the left knob of the carriage chop off by the frame (Jane's Remington, 2002) We direct the eye down at nearly the whole typewriter in this view, on the other hand although it looms large, it perceive s far away. Cottingham's paintings not absent an untouchable and pristine universe, although his approach is too straight-on sober to be verily nostalgic.

Especially striking in a number of the works is his palette, with pastel loams contrasted to deeper, cooler shades in plating and chrome. Jane's Remington is placed upon a pale light-green ground and casts a violet shadow, a chromaticism that appear to bes to release the machine from its be in possession of gravity. Underwood Side View (2003) displays a stately old typewriter in profile, exposing its logical nevertheless formally ornate internal mechanism. Shades of amethystine and black dominate in the straight and curving trajectory of the reflective metal frame, while a light tangerine background gaily infiltrates the machine's somber mien.

To make the paper-pulp pieces, Cottingham brought drawings upon vellum to Dieu Donne; he prefered the colors by placing the drawings above solid-colored sheets. Liking the way the vellum dulled the brightness of the underlying paper, he recreated this coloristic consequence in the paintings, which were made through spraying wet, pigmented black linen soft part over a colored cotton base sheet. The veiled color and textur spray contrast with the sculptural weight of the composition. Like a great deal of hyperrealism, Cottingham's always verges upon abstraction in its focus upon details that seem to increase stranger the longer you gaze at them. In "Components," the enlarged and unfamiliar machine parts have nearly entirely escaped any representational function.

--Faye Hirsch

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group