Ann Wilson and Carol Ross at Janos Gat

A relatively unsung member of the Coenties Slip assemblage Ann Wilson worked alongside Agnes Martin, Lenore Tawney and Ellsworth Kelly in the late 1950 Using antique American quilts as supports, Wilson enhanced their sewn geometric designs with her be in possession of painterly marks. A recent display of eight collages and ten paintings presented a compelling coda to Wilson's early quilt paintings. These of recent origin works employ blocks of rest or painted color to create radiant patchwork abstractions.

Wilson popularly creates collages from tree leaves, which she make an incision ins into small squares and rectangles. Working with an autumnal palette of red gold and verdants she organizes the cropped leaves into geometric compositions. A wine r square dominates Protean I (2001) and is bordered upon three sides by strips of orange, gold-colored and green. In Protean II (2001) Wilson arranges russet-toned leaves into three round pillars Vaguely resembling smokestacks, these vertical forms advance before a sun-drenched field of pale virid and gold squares.

The geometric rigor of these collages is reckonered by signs of natural change and decay. Brown speckle litter greatest in quantity of the leaves, as do occasional tears and apertures Also remarkable are the veins of each leaf, which Wilson carefully integrates into her compositions. The veins form delicate, irregular skeins of diagonal lines across the insistent grids, providing an organic antidote to the artist's more rational arrangements of color and form.

In the extreme point nature will finally claim these collages, whose colors fade with the passage of time. As if to arrest this chromatic drain, Wilson creates multiple painted versions of each composition. When translated into watercolor upon silk, her paintings retain the pair the muted palette and slightly wrinkled fabric of the leaf collages. Other versions are realized in ovum tempera on gessoed panels. from one side a layered application of pigments and glazes, Wilson generates mosaics of thick sparkling jewel-tones. Their vibrancy surpasses that of the leaf-laden originals.

Also employing a geometric vocabulary, Carol Ros proffered three aluminum laminate sculptures and single made from cherry wood. Sharp-edged, symmetrical and brushed to level finishes, these three-dimensional forms boldly assert themselves like corporate icons. however this initial impression of impersonal minimalism is melted by various organic associations. In the magnificent Monarch (2002) for example, pyramidal quadrants are cleaved apart by means of deep notches to suggest the unclose wings of a butterfly. As although reversing Wilson's abstractions from nature, Ros curbs an elegant naturalism from potentially sterile shapes and materials.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group