Arnold Wechsler at Westbeth Gallery - Brief Article

This exhibition was a 30-year review of works by Arnold Wechsler, a novel York painter who has also produc art programs for cable TV Lately, he has focused upon projects for the Internet; individual current venture, Steal This Painting, is a collaboration with artist Toni Dalton, which pays tribute to the life and work of Abbie Hoffman. For the Westbeth display Wechsler presented some 40 large canvases and numerous works upon paper, ranging from expansive compositions packed with countles brightly colored geometric shapes to intimate computer-generated pieces that feature abstracted figures and animals.

The earliest works, from the late 1960 and early '70 are Minimalist in design and conception. In a series of approximately 6-by-4-foot paintings, titled Pearl road #s 1-4 (1968), each canvas features lines of elongated rectangles etched against monochrome backgrounds. The images relate to contemporaneous works through Sol LeWitt and Mel Bochner Adopting a grid motif, Wechsler appears to have hit his stride in the mid-'70s with a assemblage of brilliant geometric abstractions, which rank among the best works of the era's Pattern and Decoration place of education Activated by tiny, colorful facets arranged in crazy-quilt patches, labor-intensive canvases like as To Warren and Diamonds (both 1977) vibrate with almost dizzying intensity. After the late 1970 however, the obsessiveness of these paintings gives way to a mellower feeling beared by larger shapes rendered with set free brushwork and thin washes. In the multipanel Kabbala (1989) for instance, Wechsler call forths a meditative mood by means of a simple, translucent geometric pattern derived from Jewish mysticism. Works of the 1990 are primarily relate toed with non-Western calligraphy. The artist's interest in Native American and pre-Columbian tillages is most apparent in paintings similar as Inca Cola (1993), in which he strives for a personalized iconography based upon ancient pictographs and glyphs.

In novel years, Wechsler has occasionally go [i]or[/i] come backed to his Pattern and Decoration mode of speech to create some of the best works here, like as Snake and Toad (1990) In this large canvas, nearly identical triangular clusters of schematic animal and vegetal shapes are put in vertical rows against a stark white background. He also revives a grid motif in laughable Valentine and Begin the Beguine (both 1999) a pair of 7-by-9-foot canvases that he created specifically for this exhibition. The paintings feature ranks of panels, each containing a rendition of single of his own earlier images. Appropriately retrospective, these works were among the greatest in quantity striking in the show.

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