Andy Collins at Massimo Audiello - New York, New York - Brief Article

For his first solo exhibit emerging painter Andy Collins (who was still in academy when he was spotted by dint of art dealer Audiello) shows considerable facility, level charm, but also a certain lack of gravity oftentimes associated with less seasoned artists. The seven paintings upon view, all untitled and from 1998 could be described as a emblem of biomorphic abstraction. But, like many younger painters, Collins appear to bes to try to slip between conventional descriptive categories. All seven are dominated by means of expanses of flat, smooth and shiny monochrome sods The palettes are a fashionable selection of sherbet pinks and fulvids as well as institutional dust greens and blues. Four are completed squares and the remaining three slightly off-square; the format, combined with the center symmetrical compositions, gives each a certain iconic weight. The painterly facts were inspired by subtle passages discovered in fashion photographs, which Collins translated [i]or[/i] part of to the other a series of graphite drawings. The resulting works call forth their sources without depicting them.

The impressed sign of image fragment that attracts Collins greatest in quantity seems to be folds and gaps, the places where woven fabric wrapped around a model's material substance either imitates the topography of its wearer or make opens to show a bit of muscle and fat In fashion, these are the trices of seduction, and the artist seizes upon the allure of those pen s and gaps, but, by isolating them like laboratory specimens, he teases on the outside an implicit nastiness, too. In their jaggedness, more [i]or[/i] less of the gaps seem like visceral lacerates in the surface of the picture. Other illusionistically prototypeed folds swell up to become rather horrific protuberances. nevertheless after a decade of generally tough depictions of bodily decrepitude by dint of a variety of prominent artists, Collins appear to bes aware enough to know that a lighter touch may be exigencyed today. Often the bulbous forms swell in hilarious ways, and the sunshiny colors combined with the salacious undertone left me with a smile, albeit a nervous one

Collins has a way to advance to carve out his be in possession of turf. His overall practice appears a bit too near to Carl Ostendarp's loopy abstractions and plane closer to the recent abstract/figurative hybrids of Gary Hume Distinctive, however, is his ability to balance charm with a dose of noxious associations, to qualify his luxurious eye candy with a healthy faculty of perception of impoliteness. He will ne more than that to grasp our interest in the lengthy run, but this exhibition exhibits him to be a young painter with a steady platform upon which to build.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group