NEW YORK: Suzanne Joelson at Debs & Co - New York, New York - Brief Article

"Family," a present to view of 10 abstract paintings complet between 1997 and '98 unveils its predominating play upon words in the form of scale. Each canvas is sized to the dimensions of the bed that is named in its title: King, Queen Double Summer Double Winter, Young Twin, Sick Twin, R Kid, cerulean Kid, Infant and Infant sapphirine One is struck initially by the agency of the Murphybed-like hanging of the show; each canvas shares the same depressed base line (18 inches not on the floor), as though the paintings were all cot [i]or[/i] coteed into the walls and waiting to be twitched down to their useful positions parallel to the floor. by the agency of compelling us to kneel down to gaze closely at Infant and Infant cerulean and to stand back to take in King and Queen Joelson establishes a physical relationship between viewers and the paintings.

The show's familial relationships lean toward the sinister. It's as if we are witnessing diseases gestating beneath microscopes, sheets drenched with bodily fluids, monstrous peering organ of sights dismembered limbs, nightmares all. Sick Twin is the darkest of the paintings and hints fever-induced dreams. Maroon line come ups out of violet, teeth and plant forms congeal in a sickly virid slime. An organic, flat, r shape transmutes into a clawing hand, and pink residue rises like vital current from an underwater wound.

In R Kid, another painting that hints at illness--or sexual awakening--the canvas shimmers with heat, consum in a defect of red and yellow flames. Infant, made up for the greatest part of white canvas washed with creamy pinks, a golden the texture of dried ovum yolk and a milky brown is powerfully unnerving because of its mucousy color range.

King and Queen have the greatest in quantity frontal power; like large playing cards they allude to a monumental royalty. Queen, with its palette of red and gold indicates the momentum of a giant squid rising to the surface of the canvas, and King, a mixture of fulvouss browns and blacks, could propose something as large as the forming of the cosmos

upon one level, our familiarity with the paintings' dimensions--most of us drowse on beds--works to their advantage; on the contrary the literalness of their scale also narrows Joelson's frame of reference; no matter by what means many analogies-conception, birth, sleep, seasons, death--she introduces end titles and varied paint handling, our experience of each work go [i]or[/i] come backs to the mundane fact of the bed. Joelson's surfaces are in a constant state of becoming, on the other hand the paintings lack spatial tension and, for all their variety, they reiterate an illustrative direction Joelson relies on verbal and visual calembourgs rather than paint, to fetch her ideas.

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