Francisco Castro Lenero at Howard Scott - Brief Article

The Mexican artist Francisco Castro Lenero makes use of color exceedingly well in his moderately large checkerboard paintings from 2000 His mut colors resonate lyrically, even as the geometric regularity of his art demonstrates ties to Malevich's Suprematism and Mondrian's austere modernity. Lenero balances tonal subtleties with his right-angled shapes. At the same time, he takes care to shuffle his compositions with small marks, in like manner that the studied perfection of his geometry is sprout by the imperfection of the scratch or stain on the surface that can recall timeworn linoleum floors. In this way, Lenero is a author of poems of the everyday, rooted in physical reality.

There is a deliberate mysteriousness to these paintings that come rounds away from their overt regularity. In the beautifully execut Simetrias (Symmetries), a large acrylic upon canvas, the left side is off-white with many markings, while upon the right the color is r with white showing from one side in places. Down the middle is a double file of checkered squares, red and white, with a black horizontal footprint just below the center Besides suggesting that the canvas is a floor, the footprint leaves its mark of possibility and humanity in the work.

In Juego y Memoria (Game and Memory), a checkerboard of light tan and off-white squares, brown lines and smutchs again suggest the wear and tear of a long-used floor. Down the center of the composition, a brown-black shadow appears upon edges of the tan squares, as if a liquid had been poured down the middle of the painting. on the contrary because the stain is not continuous (it skips the white squares), we know that it is deliberately constructed

In Planta baja (Ground Floor), something different occurs: lines of tan and white squares are thrown into visual disarray by the agency of center rows of olive verdant and off-white, and .on the right by dint of a horizontal black bar cutting across the bottom of sum of two units squares about two-thirds of the way down the painting. There is a tricky change in the bar between the squares; upon the right it is les dark than upon the left. It is this kind of dominion government that makes Lenero's paintings memorable examples of their kind.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group