Denyse Thomasos at Lennon, Weinberg - New York, New York - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The paintings of Denyse Thomasos, a young artist born in Trinidad and now living in of recent origin York City, deploy dozens of adjoining squarish grids across the canvases in a quiltlike arrangement. Each grid section is made from criss-crossing horizontal and vertical stripes of various colors. Although based upon simple marks and configurations, the resulting patterns, which be like broken-up lattice work, are formally compounded and capable of suggesting many kinds of experience.

The 13 works in this exhibit ranged from small 14-by-12-inch canvases to large paintings like as the massive 10-by-16-foot Urban Jewels (1995) The white, black, r and orange patches distributed evenly from one extremity to the other of Urban Jewels lend it coherence and make while the intermittent light-blue and orange units add brightness. Drips of paint flowing from the individual brushstrokes intensify the painterly atmosphere. Interestingly, Thomasos angles her latticelike squares for a like reason that they sometimes appear to form cubes, unexpectedly creating the illusion of spatial profundity As with many of the works in the present to view the improvised, free-floating structure of Urban Jewels is suggestive of one as well as the other jazz and big-city life. individual also notices how, in its intricate overlays and randomly applied colors, the painting fetchs the density and chaos of urban experience in a true different fashion from Mondrian's famous novel York City-inspired grid paintings of the 1940s

The small works in the display were equally of interest. Compos of thick superimposed black, brown gray and light amethystine strokes, Spell (1997), for instance, although solitary 14 by 12 inches, has the feeling and power of a plenteous larger painting.

Thomasos's paintings are compositionally herculean yet in an artist's statement she makes it clear that her be of importance tos are not only formal: "I link my personal history with my historical past. Slavery marks the start of my history; each thump -- a lash, each mark -- resilience in the fields." She thus link togethers her painting process with the historical memory of servitude. in these powerful, densely structur paintings, Thomasos has created an abstract material part of work that is all the more compelling for its evocation of actual experience.

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