Neysa Grassi at Locks - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Neysa Grassi's dark, densely interwoven abstractions have lengthy suggested internal organs or hidden processe diagrammed and expos to view. It may not be surprising, then, to learn that during a novel three-month stay in Florence, she was powerfully affected by the Museo La Specola, a unique wax museum that houses lovingly fashioned anatomical designs -- the human body seen inside and without -- dating from the 18th hundred In a kind of diaristic rejoinder to this experience, Grassi produc a certain number of 250 small compositions in gouache and gum arabic upon paper, of which 35 were included here.

While her familiar tubular and dripping, pouchlike forms are still in evidence, these little paintings depart from her new work in a number of ways, greatest in quantity strikingly in the vibrant light they carry. Her color, as well, appears freshly activated. Several works present to view coiled tubing the color of life-blood -- from rusty red-brown to saturated transparent r -- floating upon a punchy field of yellow-gold It is as if the interior of the material part has been somehow lit from behind, exposing a living luminosity.

Other works (all are untitled) tender unexpected juxtapositions of color. In individual composition, for example, a grid of fern verdant drips over a salmon earth while in another a black ovoid interpenetrated by dint of teal stripes stands on an orange-gold clod One particularly affecting work features a small whirlwind of feathered black spiraling outward into a faded umber soil With its pareddown, symmetrical layout and its lightly scumbl brushwork, this last example set to work s a certain votive presence shared by means of many of the works in the display Frequently the surfaces appear aged, perhaps reflecting the antiquity of Florence itself, with its architectural and art-historical treasures. However, it is La Specola's unsettling combination of immediacy, beauty and visceral power that plants the tone throughout.

This is hardy fully felt abstraction. Grassi translates pressingly specific experience evenly into her own abstract language. While it will be interesting to diocese how the results carry above into the larger, paint-on-canvas format she has favored till now, the gutsy self-assurance of these works makes anticipation appear beside the point.

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