Paul Henry Ramirez at Caren Golden - Brief Article

In numerous cluster shows over the past small in number years, Paul Henry Ramirez has made a name for himself as a playful organic abstractionist. His colorful paintings appear spontaneous at first glance, on the contrary they're actually precisely rendered images that bring a Pop or cartoonlike spin upon the drips and splatters of abstract painting. His next to the first solo show at Caren of gold was titled "Real Pretty Simple Innocent Paintings," a jokey denial of the sexual quality of his imagery.

Ramirez skillfully balances positive and negative spaces in five novel large-scale canvases. Crisply drawn lines meander around the white canvas, looping, curving and sometimes clumping like a hairball in a shower drain. Engorged drops are tickled by arcing and coiling strands that ofttimes spurt from mole- or nipplelike forms. Bulbous shapes, sometimes sporting their possess tufts, dangle pendulously from attenuated lines. There are also splashes and dancing globules of liquid. Poured dots of paint in dazzling, layered combinations of three or four colors recall sections of tap [i]or[/i] pat Close's recent works in which each square is like a miniature Color-Field painting. The level shiny dots seem to float upon the surface and look as if they could be decorticateed off intact. Here and there are actual--yet planned--spills and stains that work for as a backdrop for the faux chaos around them.

Ramirez also uses areas of solid color to twig the isolated shapes cavorting about the surface. For example, the right half of individual long rectangular work is completely black. A curving amethystine form abuts the mass and appears to hold it back from encroaching upon the festivities on the left side of the canvas. In another work sum of two units round lavender testicle shapes at the top flutter over the busyness below. The works thus burst with energy that they sometimes spill onto the walls. single canvas seemed held in place, or contained, by the agency of geometric shapes painted on the wall upon either side.

Ramirez's work could also be seen in the novel "Pop Surrealism" show at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Conn for which he took above the wall and columns in the museum's foyer and portico with a burgeoning wall painting. granting he has been criticized for being too derivative (of Carroll Dunham, Amy Sillman, etc) his pleasantry and visually seductive works speak their have a title to language.

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