Peggy Cyphers at The Proposition - New York

Peggy Cyphers's abstract, mixed-medium paintings repeatedly seem to have been created from one side organic processes of erosion and increase but actually make reference to the artist's real-life surroundings. Her latest exhibition included 12 paintings, nine of which constitute a series titled "Girl in the City." In single of these, the mostly dark-hued Night (2002) many multicolored dots might remind viewers of city lights. The artist herself is exhibited (though few are likely to recognize her) by dint of three tiny red spots, as if reduc to organ of sights and mouth. Squares equal buildings and intriguing regions of gold leaf summon forth a somewhat glamorous mood.

Like Paul Klee Cyphers exercises simple elements to form elegant compositions; like Joan Mitchell, she nurses to work her canvases in a compact layered manner guided by an instinct for balancing form and color. on the contrary her understated, vaguely representational visual lexicon is completely of her have invention. Cyphers sometimes applies sand to her canvases for added weft In Dog Walker (2003), individual such piece, bright pink plays not upon of light green and various earth tones. Vivaldi (2003) boldly asserts Chinese red fulvouss and a big black bleb Navy blue dots carouse across the composition--and surprisingly don't clash with the rest

The sum of two units paintings not from the "Girl" series are, respectively, the sparsest and the densest in the display Little constellations of black flaws which bear resemblance to bug tracks, scoot across the large, mainly beige Santa Fe (2002). In the same painting, sum of two units Brancusi-esque minarets stand in the lower left-hand corner, paying abstruse homage to the Twin Towers. (Cyphers painted the piece while upon a New Mexico residency organized to give relief to fresh York-based artists following the terrorist attacks upon the city.) Future Byzantium--Turner (1998-2003) appears to have mos growing upon it. Scars, foliage, stains and glyph draw near to mind, since Cyphers restores shapes resembling but not exactly depicting of that kind things. Areas of blue strike one as being to glow, and yellow areas recede

Cyphers also not absented a series of "clones" (her term) of her work, the alone unfortunate aspect of the exhibition. These photographic reproductions of paintings, backed through aluminum and preserved under Plexiglas, put up to sale in multiples. Their slick surfaces lack the intensity of the paintings, which hang on texture for much of their character. They don't do justice to Cyphers's work, which really exigencys to be experienced firsthand in order to be fitly appreciated.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group