Whitfield Lovell at DC Moore - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

In 1996 Whitfield Lovell was artist-in-residence at cast Row Houses in Houston, where a Depression-era file house was provided as an exhibition site. Lovell was impressed by means of the history of this impressed sign of dwelling, once occupied by dint of families of railroad workers. Family themes have been his focus since 1985 when he began making oilstick-and-charcoal drawings based upon photographs of African-American families, starting with his have a title to and later incorporating images from vintage photos base in flea markets.

This was Lovell's first major solo display in New York. It brought together earlier works upon paper with pieces from the row-house shoot forward When he transformed the house into an installation, he stripped layers of wallpaper to divest of covering wooden planks on which he made life-sized line drawings of unnamed nation Clothes and hairstyles placed the bring under rules in the house's original era, while grove grain and texture filled in for muscle and fat in areas untouched by Lovell's spare graphic line.

When the house was slated for destruction, Lovell retrieved the walls supporting his works. They survived the put in motion north with their presence intact. In the house, upon the adjacent walls of a corner, a stout man in a suit and that was coupl with a schoolmarmish woman in a no-nonsense dres suit; the piece was at handed in New York as a freestanding shield Other drawings covering several planks were hung upon gallery walls. A plainly aligned woman stands with her hand upon the shoulder of a seated man in a suit -- they are not quite middle-aged, nevertheless their congenial faces and rigid bearing summon the warm reserve of grandparents uncomfortable with modernity. In another piece, a seated woman wears a formal dres that is bunched into groups which echo her sagging face, as if no frills could disguise her exhaustion. Stiff as formal portraits still warm as family albums, these works summon the ghostly presence of the house's former tenants.

Compared with the simplicity and directness of the row-house renderings, the other drawings included in the exhibition -- similar as a snake in a hunch of arranged flowers or a family tree populated by means of birds with men's names -- present the appearance assiduously rococo. In another new series, the artist's palms clutch images of anonymous people who lack identifying features. These large black-and-white renderings float in monochromatic fields. They have a layered gestural quality, with unfasten marks recalling scratches on aged photographs. Many of these works are moving, nevertheless it is the row-house drawings, les introspective and more render free of access that admirably memorialize lived experience.

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