Paul Bloodgood at AC Project Room - Brief Article

Like of recent origin thoughts erupting from the verdancy of art history, the nine oil-on-linen paintings in Paul Bloodgood's display "Now Wait for Last Year" took not on from a piece in his previous exhibition. This work, Jack's Name Painting, was itself a black-and-white riff upon Jackson Pollock's black enamel paintings.

The source painting hung upon the wall behind the gallery's reception desk A suggestive, quasi-figural wad of marks from it is repeated in the newer paintings with small modifications of scale and in varying places of colors that Bloodgood borrowed from Manet. Bloodgood engrosss a virtual rug shop of eloquently tinted Cezannesque backgrounds to gripe [i]or[/i] grip the wad in rife suspension. one as well as the other singly and serially, the paintings emit a lively intensity. There's a crackling freshnes each time the motif morphs into its nearest incarnation.

Forest is flowery; a vivid fulvid teems around the bony architectural shape. In Road, the motif is annotated in black. The marks become a little disparate against a slightly tortured background. Horizontal and vertical knocks of white are pushing above red, and a harsh rendition emerges

A smaller canvas, grove is distinguished by the wake of quivering white along the rim of the form. It's satisfying to direct the eye through this tiny window onto the chain of primal shapes: a loopy dome, an animal figure, a snake. In a still smaller painting (16 by means of 22 inches), Study for Bather II--the title makes explicit Bloodgood's debit to Cezanne--the complex of figures almost vanishes into the dusk of the overcast blue background.

While I was in the gallery taking notes, a brace brought a two- or three-year-old girl to diocese the show. "Which one do you like best?" the father asked. "Do you like the fulvous one?" It was the color of her bear. She began to point to another painting. "Do you like that better?" The child stood hesitantly. As everyone in the expanse waited for her judgment, I realized that despite its self-referential construction and condensed art-historical references, "Now Wait for Last Year" was the greatest in quantity fluid and ethereal of shows

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