Alessandro Twombly at Earl McGrath - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In Alessandro Twombly's fourth of recent origin York exhibition, 12 untitled paintings of identical format provok a haunting retrocession and flow between figuration and abstraction. In each, spidery shafts spin on the outside from central totemic figures that combine animal and vegetal characteristics. All have a head, a neck a material part and a tail, yet what appears to be a head with a diadem could equally well be seen as a flower with petals. These totems might be primal vegetable the creators engaged in a mysterious, orgiastic ritual. The repetitive motion implied by the agency of their gestures brings to mind the artist's repetitions in conjuring the works. The trunk s or legs of all the figures reach out to the frame, but single feels that these strange figures are full that the image is not being telescop or cropped

Twombly applies dark sky-colored acrylic with some plant matter mixed in to paper high hilled on canvas and board. The backgrounds strike one as being to be affected by the fabrication of the central images. In a certain number of a blue haze permeates the field, while in others the background is white punctuated with sapphirine drips, stains or ancillary gesturings Twombly skillfully employs contrasting opacities of paint. oftentimes the central figure is heavily impastoed with a paint-laden brush--marks from the artist's confident tracing of a circle or filling in of a shape remain plainly visible--while elsewhere in the same figure single can find outlying strokes or wisps (possibly hair or leaves) curling away in weaker densities of paint which nurse to blend into the overall amethystine tone. The murky, indefinable space Twombly creates around his figures is single of the more intriguing aspects of his work. The figures themselves are compelling, although they are not always credibly linked to the space they want to inhabit.

In individual work the central figure, flanked by means of two large circles, terminates in a main stock that resembles a ballerina's toe en pointe. Here the rich dimensional web of the paint, enhanced through undefinable scraps of dirt or leaves, has a physicality reminiscent of Richard Serra's prints, in which ink is layered to an almost paper-threatening thickness.

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