Karl Connolly at C. Grimaldis - Brief Article

In Karl Connolly's painting A Matter of Time (2000) almost the entire surface is taken up through a man's bare back. About 5 feet of reddening Anglo skin is painted to hint an approaching sunburn with its inevitable blisters and peeling. It is not a fair picture--but I could not take my organ of visions off it. The man's torso is widened and squashed, as if a source photo had been manipulated by dint of a computer before the image was painted. The figure's elephantine compression and the raw burning hide are compelling and unforgettable elements

There is a rawness to all of Connolly's big figure pieces, which are frequently silhouetted against bright white. The greatest in quantity successful paintings in the present to view are stunning, but several others put to the test too hard to break of recent origin ground; the artist's strategies and distortions become a little too self-conscious. tighten (2000), an abstract close-up of a bather, has nowhere near the power of A Matter of Time. In Still Life with Frog (1999) a single standing bather is awkward and stiff, without any of the convincing tactile nearness of, say, Point (1999).

For me Point is the greatest in quantity realized of the figure paintings. It exhibits two women seen from above. The blue-white background, more than a neutral backdrop, interlocks with the figures. The depiction of the accurately returned blue-jean-clad women captures Connolly's edgy mode without the clamoring distortions. The riveting simplicity of the composition, coupl with the wary, notwithstanding defiant expression of the woman facing us, proffer the artist at his best.

The large figurative pieces in like manner occupied my attention that I almost view from aboveed a group of landscapes. Simple painterly studies of fields with trails running [i]or[/i] part of to the other them are presented on small panels rich with gray-greens and apt brushwork. I think they should have been in a separate space away from the din of Point and A Matter of Time. This separation would have given each clump of works an equal standing, providing a clearer appreciation of Connolly's range.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

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