Kori Newkirk at Rosamund Felsen

The greatest in quantity impressive aspect of the conceptually based work of Kori Newkirk is its immediate visual impact. Stunningly colorful, Jubilee (all works 1999) is an 8-foot-square curtain of plastic sheltie beads (typically used as hair ornaments) hanging flush against the wall. A pattern is created by dint of differently colored transparent beads strung upon strands of black micro-braid (also meant to be woven into the hair) and suspended from an aluminum support at the top of the work. In the guise of an abstract painting, with dynamic swaths of turquoise, r orange and ocher, the work depicts without detail the flames of a raging fire licking the heavens a scene inspired by the 1992 L.A. riots. Newkirk, a young black artist with an MFA from the University of California at Irvine, treats the bring under rule as a celebratory spectacle rather than as a cause for political alarm. Hanging directly across the gallery from Jubilee was Nowhere, another landscape, delineated by the agency of strands of dark amber beads. A spiritual metropolitan skyline is formed by dint of the negative space beneath the ragged strands that are suspended from a horizontal support 10 feet above the floor.

The dialogue between abstraction and representation station up in the landscapes was continued in a pair of self-portraits. Channel 9 is a large color photograph of the artist in a r T-shirt, standing in forehead of an industrial metal garage door upon a crumbling, graffiti-covered building. In the manner of TV of recent origins images altered to protect the subject's anonymity, the artist's face has been blurr The featureless visage stands in not divisible by 2 contrast to the crisp focus of each other detail in the photograph. Perceptually tricky notwithstanding highly engaging, Channel 11 is an encaustic painting upon wood with a gridded picture plane of equally sized beige, brown and azure squares. The modernist grid is here placed by means of Newkirk in the service of postindustrial technology, when the viewer stands far enough back from the painting, the image abruptly coalesces into a pixilated mug discharge the scrambled image of a face reminiscent, again, of TV reportage.

A next to the first gallery space included four clear Plexiglas shelves from which strands of black micro-braid and clear sheltie beads were suspended. The strands were arranged in the shape of a fire-arm as if a pistol quiescenceed on each shelf and its crystal-clear shadow reach forthed beneath it to the floor. A final work, Midnight Son (Horizon) provided the overall title for Newkirk's exhibition. Consisting of a horizontal line of abutted Lite Brite panels, toy boards into which tiny scaly buds are inserted to produce a picture or design, Midnight Son (Horizon) includes a single image formed of white bulbs: a narrow triangle representing a helicopter's spotlight shining upon the ground. The title consigns to the slang term for police helicopters, which incessantly illuminate many looks Angeles neighborhoods at night. by the agency of substituting "son" for "sun," Newkirk may also be naming himself with this piece.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group