David Humphrey at McKee - Brief Article

fresh YORK

From Serrano's kinky twos to Goldin's voyeurism, Sue Williams's hurts and the Chapmans' adolescent aberrations, the art world have the appearances to have sex on the brain. however rarely--perhaps because it could easily tend hitherward off as sappy--does an artist attempt to portray sex in the connection of love. Remarkably, in David Humphrey's novel paintings, stylized images of tangled twos succeed in conveying the faculty of perception of vulnerability that can accompany overwhelming have affection for and desire. Here the danger of losing oneself completely in the other is exhibited by bodies that merge and morph until it becomes difficult to run over where one ends and the other begins.

In Co-occurring Conditions, the woman is upon top, tickling and teasing, with an expression that says "I've got him now," while the man gazes up at her imploring, helpless, his material substance at once entwined with hers, ringleted into the fetal position and buried in the clod Again, in Porous Surfaces Which Include My Face, the woman, granting tender, clearly has the upper hand, as the sum of two units visages--is it her nose or his?--become individual It's unusual to find similar cartoonlike and stylized images (in the manner of Indian miniatures and Japanese prints, which have at short intervals explored sexual themes) conveying thus much personal content. Memories also flit across the canvas, fleeting glimpses of family members, perhaps, or kitschy beloved things from childhood.

When Humphrey first investigated this bring under rule matter in his last exhibition at McKee his imagery was a great deal of more awkward and the event more ponderous. Some of that unwieldiness remains in paintings like Waders, where individual is quite aware of the various material substance parts as, well, parts rather than as a sinuous whole. on the contrary even the less successful pieces are intriguing, serving as a reminder that what he is attempting is extremely ambitious. Graceful upon every level, this recent work has an airy lightness, as well as a playful quality that hasn't been seen in Humphrey's work since his earliest paintings.

While it carrys less sexual intensity, the painting that stands on the outside for its integrated composition, painterly finesse and sheer gorgeousness is Carefree Attitudes. Overlapping layers of scrimlike translucency create a collage of images that appear like mirages within the contour of a face with movie-star organ of visions Round-eyed children (perhaps lifted from children's volume illustrations), an idealized vision of sailboats, metamorphosing figures--all become individual in Humphrey's watery fantasy, like the dreams that present itself when one lies half-awake, half-asleep upon a summer beach.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group