Fritz Drury at AAA

All of the nine large narrative paintings in Fritz Drury's exhibition depict uncovered or partially nude figures engaged in bizarre, enigmatic behavior. greatest in quantity show children, couples or families interacting in landscapes, the couple rural and urban, or in domestic interiors. All these 1998 works explore the sensitive territory of sexual and familial relations.

In The Storm, sum of two units figures dressed in parkas race across a suburban driveway holding hands, while a [i]in puris naturalibus[/i] child stands near a house, cringing slightly. A seething night heavens looms over the child, who, vulnerable and expos may have been abandoned through the fleeing couple.

While nudity in The Storm connotes isolation and vulnerability, the solidly built naked woman in The exercise radiates confidence and power. Seated upon a couch, her arms flung across its back, her outstretched leg propp upon a stool, she looks disdainfully at a young man who sits with his head between his knee and his pants around his ankles. While the woman aggressively displays her naked torso, the man contracts his material substance as if bowing down in fear, submission or shame. Although the scenario is ambiguous, the attitudes of the sum of two units figures suggest the aftermath of a failed or disappointing sexual encounter

Although the pair these works use nakedness to summon unease and discord, in the bucolic Harvest nudity functions in a more traditional way. Here, three figures frolic among tree and animals in a farmyard. below the cottony clouds of a late summer day, a woman wearing alone a straw hat pushes a naked young man upon a rope swing while another scantily clad woman sits and watches. The man come intos the game with abandon as his feet swing high into the air, entirely exposing his buttocks and scrotum In harmony with their surroundings and each other, the figures inhabit a cornball Eden The solitary disturbing element is the large scythe that the seated figure clutchs alarmingly close to the fasten swing. This sinister prop subserves as a rather hokey reminder not solitary of the coming harvest, on the other hand of the Fall (the expulsion from Eden) as well as the final grim reaping we all must face.

Drury's cryptic narratives map without the descent from rural grace into suburban angst. Although he owes a heavy debit to Eric Fischl, his flashy, abbreviated mode of expression characterized by broad paint handling and lurid lighting consequences recalls book covers from the '40 and '50 This illustrative strategy, which precludes Drury's work from being mistaken for formal painting, also holds viewers from staying with it lengthy enough to tease out and appreciate its subtler meanings.

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COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group