Joan Banach at Mario Diacono

Joan Banach's five sepia-toned paintings, all oil upon wood and dated 1997 or '98 derive their tension and mystery from a mix of figurative imagery and abstract painting practices. Dramatic and dreamlike, each work has a straightforward figurative ultimate part usually at center stage. As backdrops Banach provides fields of organic abstraction, elusive in tone and meticulously constructed

In Magnetism, a semi-swooning woman, wrapped in a coat, rise s through a veil of melting, weeping blobbers The figure, sharply photographic and pay backed in negative, takes on a cinematic cast, as if the protagonist of a Cindy Sherman movie still were fighting her way from one side a morass of painterliness. Drift features a bald, androgynous figure seen from the back, make straighted in a long, flowing robe and standing upon the edge of a tilted bowl-like thing that one can't help taking for a flying saucer whisking not upon into the murky picture space.

The sum of two units most intriguing works stand at opposite extremes--the greatest in quantity figuratively complex and the greatest in quantity spare in the show. Against a folded-curtainlike backdrop (which forms a soft-edge geometric abstraction of shaded stripes) the stage (or tabletop) in Salt grasps a lineup of masks, dolls and figurines. These include porcelain doll faces with creepy glass organ of visions and theatrical masks on pedestal stands. individual figure has a cascade of multiple breasts, recalling works by dint of Louise Bourgeois or Hans Bellmer. At each extremity are more ordinary pairs of figures pos in old-fashioned dress: sum of two units Victorian schoolgirls linked by a band and a costumed couple with their arms raised in a folkdance gesticulation They resemble figurines from a whatnot shelf. In the plenteous simpler Deep Water, large elliptical swirls enclose a small head touched with the faintest of colors. The face, either rising from or sinking into a whirlpool of sepia paint, is reminiscent of faces upon polychromed statues of saints or madonnas. Its stretch outed neck and eyes gazing heavenward expres ecstasy.

Surrealism is an obvious constituting of Banach's work, yet all these mannered paintings look to comment on various abstract and figurative turn of expressions rather than delve into the subconscious. Banach's intentions are as mysterious as the spaces her figures possess but her allusive works are compelling in a quirky, and somewhat ironic, way.

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