Paul Myoda at Friedrich Petzel - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Those looking forward to Paul Myoda's latest material substance of sculpture and video pieces were startled to walk into a gallery filled, instead, with paintings. In fogs his third solo show in of recent origin York, Myoda tackled what is for him a fresh medium, while pursuing his previous investigations into issues of representation, meaning and the transformative nature of art.

The exhibition consisted of nine anthropomorphic cloudscapes from 1997 done in a variety of horizontal, vertical and circular formats. Titles similar as Ahhh, Arg.uh.uh. and Rrrr recall the onomatopoeic expressions that Myoda played with in his 1995 Gargoyle video. Figural nebulosity forms twist in space against veristic representations of brilliant sky-colored skies and white vaporous mists evoking traditional haze study paintings.

Myoda's painterly passages and fluid brushstrokes are calculatored by the sculptural quality of his forms (contradicting, too, the amorphous and mutable nature of clouds) The high contrast between light and shadow prevailing over the series is largely responsible for the three-dimensional power of the modeling. For all the swirling paint and bravura brushstrokes in Ahhh and ShAh, for example, the figures be like marble sculptures more than they do swelled ethereal clouds. The voluptuously curv Gaston Lachaise-like figure in ShAh grasps up a dark, rippling mass that be likes Atlas supporting the weight of the world upon his back. The featureless bodies in Ahhh are hard and plain in the cold blue light, while the curv and biomorphic forms framing them appear to be chiseled on the outside of stone.

Many of the figures in Myoda's paintings present the appearance to be engaged in a certain number of sort of mating ritual despite the indeterminacy of their sex Like his earlier gargoyle plastic arts that combined religious, cultural and esthetic simple bodys from Asian and European sources, the painted figures are curioUs hybrids. In the case of the marvel sculptures, Myoda used synthetic materials with imagination and skill, eliciting mingled visceral responses. In contrast, his efforts in paint are visually and experientially disappointing. single can admire Myoda's venturing into unfamiliar territory. on the other hand one hopes he will get back to a path where general [i]or[/i] abstract notion medium and realization coalesce into something possessing the power and mystery invoked by means of his previous work in plastic art and video.

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