Wes Mills at James Kelly Contemporary - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

While a large part of this display of 1998-99 work presented Wes Mills in a familiar light--as a creator of minimalist, densely worked, small-scale drawings in graphite and ink--a clump of four of his actual latest drawings, which incorporate oil paint and collage uncompounded bodys marked a departure. In My Best Estimation, for instance, sum of two units dark-gray squares made with Mills's characteristic tiny graphite marks are flanked through a third square which is all on the other hand obscured by a thick dollop of lustrous, pale-pink oil paint. The background is enlivened with airy washes of cream-white pulverized substanceed pigment interspersed with traces of pink and pale gold-colored In the corner are remnants of written notations that have been revised and erased, suggesting something of the artist's emotional and methodical processe In another composition, sum of two units balls of tinfoil adhered to the drawing's surface are juxtaposed against a pale background laced with faint fulvous wisps of oil paint.

Among the more familiar impressed sign of drawings in the display was the exquisite series "Blue upon White." Here, distorted gray-blue geometric forms that Mills has shaded above or rubbed with graphite float upon pale, luminous backgrounds that summon forth the hazy light behind fogs In other drawings, Mills uses the medium of ballpoint inscribe to make pairs of dark, elongated triangular forms with bowed cutting sides (reminiscent of Ellsworth Kelly's drawings). The compressed pen strokes create a shimmering, almost coppery surface. Another series features triangular stacks of thinly delineated alphabetic character A's traversing umber backgrounds. Calling to mind the utility towers that punctuate the endles highways of the American Midwest, the alphabetic character forms can be read as points of departure, markers of distance and emblems of solitude. They also allude to mathematical tangents and musical notation.

The power of Mills's work lies not single in its use of form and web to create complex perceptual relationships, on the contrary also in its rich multiplicity. His drawings appear to be to point to some higher spiritual equation, individual balanced between impulse and restraint, between the rational and the uncanny.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group