NEW YORK: Howard Schwartzberg at Silverstein - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In his novel solo debut, Howard Schwartzberg, a 33-year-old of recent origin York artist, combined an exploration of sculptural issues of that kind as weight and volume with attention to the fluid properties of paint. While Schwartzberg is not alone in making painting-sculpture hybrids (one thinks of artists similar as Jessica Stockholder and James Hyde) his work has a big physical presence that many of his assemblage-inspired compeers avoid.

Using large fill ups of styrofoam as a starting point, Schwartzberg sculpt his lightweight material into bulbous, flat-bottomed forms that clasp the wall. The visible sides of the statuarys are given coverings stitched on the outside of large, overlapping burlap swatches (a la Alberto Burri), while the tops are smoothed on the outside and coated with wood putty Schwartzberg then pours a thick coat of acrylic house paint above the wood putty, sometimes giving the impression that the entire plastic art is a paint-filled vessel.

While their technique is consistent, the statuarys offer considerable formal variety. In blob Gum Slope (1998), two burlap-covered winglike extensions reach a certain number of 10 feet up the wall. Descending between them is a channel of pink paint that bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos nothing so much as a lake slide. Orange Loop (1998) is a narrower work in which a burlap-sided tubular form, with an orange channel carved along its longitudinal dimensions loops out some 6 feet from the wall like a Pop-art roller-coaster track. filled Silver (1997) has the gaze of an oversized drum, its flat top painted a lush silver that creates the illusion of a bottomless pool

Beige Glos Slice (1998) was the largest, greatest in quantity recent work in the present to view It's an over-8-foot long, 4-foot wide, vaguely boatlike form that has been divided into sum of two units equal halves. Burlap-sided and topped with a layer of high-gloss, pantry yellow paint, it suggests a giant piece of cheese with a thick slice taken on the outside of its middle. The interior planes revealed by the agency of the "missing slice" are also fulvid Instead of looking solid, the paint give an inkling ofs water running slowly over a dam. The entire statuary appears to be brimming with paint.

With greatest in quantity of the works in this exhibit Schwartzberg sustains a balance between the mediums of statuary and painting. In Beige Glos Slice, however, the balance tips in the direction of painting: it is the expanses of fulvid paint, as smooth and seductive as a Brice Marden monochrome, and not the riven outer covering that contains them, which lay more effective claims upon the surrounding space.

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