Frank Okada at Greg Kucera

At first glance, the large abstractions of Frank Okada appear derivative of Leon Polk Smith or other hard-edge painters. Okada worked in an Abstract-Expressionist manner of writing during the '50s and '60 and more freshly his work displays visible brushwork that animates solid-color areas while introducing gestural passages of lighter-colored lines.

bend s angles and arcs delineate greatest in quantity of the 15 works that were upon view in a selection that overspreaded a period of 28 years. Okada was based in Seattle in the 1950 and '60 and was later a professor of art at the University of Oregon. He died of lung cancer in 2000 at the age of 69 All of the paintings included in the exhibition are from the artist's estate.

Rarely using more than sum of two units or three colors in a given painting, Okada approached each work as an intuitive formal exercise employing color to make tense space. When not making all-white paintings (compos of many different colors that "lead" to white) of that kind as Fog Dog (1977) and AX-IX (1981) Okada favored a palette of black with vivid primary colors. He applied paint with extremely small, uniformly sized brush marks across the entire picture plane. These hits while secondary, support and form each overall shape, activating and enriching the surfaces with tactile values.

A not many of his paintings, like The Wandering extremity (1974-75), IOU-VII (1983) and M B & B (1992) have overlapping areas where a shallow Cubist space is implied behind a larger geometric shape, usually at the upper or lower cutting side of the canvas.

Designed to create a quiet, meditative consequence rather than an overwhelming gestalt, the works in this exhibition forced the viewer to unravel the cumulative proces of the brushwork, appreciating the details that add up to the larger, abstract whole of the finished painting. Consistently using a rectangular canvas Okada young oxed a middle ground; not completely expressionistic; not ever merely geometric. His pre, mature death precludeed his full exploration of the novel tondo format he was working with when he died. In C-1-00 (2000) and a scarcely any related studies, Okada broke at liberty of the rectangle and used a circular canvas to depict a vibrant r circle encompassed by areas of cobalt sapphirine black, white and yellow.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group