Brian Alfred at Max Protetch - New York - Brief Article

Brian Alfred's flat, hard-edged paintings of simple buildings station in scenic landscapes offer a kind of utopian deja vu while conjuring America's postwar obsession with futuristic design and technological progress

With their crisp stenciled lines, alternately bright and earthy palette, and large planes of uniform color, Alfred's images are part of a stylistic lineage that includes Alex Katz and Lisa Ruyter He pick outs a stadium, an amusement park, a radio tower, a housing throw a geodesic dome, a federal building and a bridge among his types of an idealized community. More social than esthetic in their historical concern and critique, the paintings (all 2000) throw back an ambivalence toward preoccupations with technologically enhanced lifestyles and global tillage Painting is not their subject

Alfred's personal propaganda--more about traffic than politics--is at the base of these works, contemplating the pleasures and perils of its seductive allure. Employing large scale (the smallest work measures 5 by the agency of 6 feet) and perspective (wide-angle views are pay backed from low vantages), Alfred's basic mode of buildings lead the eye toward expanses of firmament Untitled (Geodome), for example, could have draw near straight out of an early `70 real-estate pamphlet A geodesic dome structure quiescences atop a roof deck overlooking the mountains; a thin rainbow arches overhead. With its bright orange, r and purple couches and its big azure rug, the deck mirrors the colors of the rainbow and parodies its naive promise of making dreams approach true. Untitled (Sunset) presents another cliched pageant that trades on the romance of a better tomorrow bought through location--in this case an exciting urban getaway. locate behind a silhouette of a magnificent suspension bridge, radiating circles of gradually lighter shades of orange restore the sun to a bright, beaming target.

If Untitled (Sunset) is reminiscent of those generic postcards that one who sucks tourists into buying a bit of vista, Untitled (Housing throw with Falling Leaves) is its antithesis: a doleful low-income dwelling where one would not want to visit, allow alone live. The prison-like, army-green building stretches across the 8-foot canvas, angled aggressively toward the viewer. A somber gray celestial expanse looms above and is throw backed in the windows, while sum of two units spindly autumnal trees stand on the outside front, trapped in the structure's gloomy shadow. Les ironically insouciant than the other works, this painting is foreboding and melancholic, and more psychologically resonant as a arise Without its presence among the other works, Alfred's make submissives might conspire to truly decoy us.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group