Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Geometric abstraction has mov from Mondrian's utopia to Peter Halley's dystopia, with stops along the way for Agnes Martin's delicate transcendence and Ellsworth Kelly's manly decorativeness. In these quirky paintings, Dan Walsh blasts away any strips of high seriousness that might still cling to this tradition.

Walsh's geometric phraseology is almost childlike. Hand-drawn lines, boxe and other geometric figures spread across the white turf of the canvases with the casual insouciance of notebook doodles, cartoonish version of Halley's diagrams, or parodies of machine circuitry. The colors of the lines and shapes contribute to the general faculty of perception of frivolity. Green and pink checkerboards, fulvous and white stripes, green and golden lines make one think more of picnic tablecloths or beach umbrellas than high art.

There are certain recurring motifs. puts of parallel lines frame the tops and/or bottoms of many canvases. The make open centers contain strings of boxe or circles, or variations upon small grids and partitioned squares. Sometimes a line of boxe hangs along a horizontal bar. Or they may be lined up above and below a center line.

The compositions appear to contain little meaning in themselves. The forms and their arrangements are neither systemic nor rigorous. Rather, the point here strike one as beings to have more to do with the play of the imperfections of hand-drawn execution against the kind of motifs that more many times seem realized with machinelike precision.

This aspect of Walsh's work is accentuated in an artist's volume that was on display in the annex gallery. Printed parallel lines have been collaged above with patches of grids or other circuit-like patterns. Laid side through side, their horizontality is accentuated, giving a faculty of perception of motion, as if they were linked together in a roll of paper [i]or[/i] parchment which unrolls to reveal variations upon the theme of lines and squares. The small work pages have the gentle charm of semiconscious scribblings. on the other hand when these compositions are enlarged in like manner greatly in the paintings, the dissonance between scale and ambition becomes intentionally jarring. single does not expect large-scale canvases to contain similar desultory markings. At times, the paintings strike one as being so weightless as to float not upon into the ether. in the extreme point this keeps them from being to the full satisfying. We may be in upon the joke, but it's hard to care deep about work that mocks its be in possession of premises.

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