Willy Lenski at O'Hara - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Willy Lenski worked with film and video in the 1970 and his cinematographic organ of sight informs his figurative art. Here he exhibited 16 medium-sized oils upon panel (the largest 45 by the agency of 70 inches), one oil upon canvas and a pencil drawing upon paper, all from the last sum of two units years. In several works, a progression in time is indicated by the agency of doubling a figure's arms in slightly different positions or repeating a figure in a Muybridge-like display of move The overall effect, buttressed by dint of a consistent ocher tint to all the works, is that of a series of advanced in years photographs or, where there is repetition, film stills.

Like advanced in years photos, the paintings have an elegiac air. In their implicit narratives, apparel or phenomenons give hints of time periods and scenarios, admitting in general, detail is minimized. A whitish background occasionally encircles figures that are clearly felt to be walking in a real space, although we have no idea where or what the space is.

In The Floorboards, a man arranges planks that have been stacked in seemingly endles array behind him. In ATM, a man in shorts and a tank-top stands before three computer shields In Nervous Priest, Lenski collages an actual negative strip, in which individual could make out architectural details. Nervous Priest is intriguing for an ambiguity plane more apparent than usual in Lenski's works. This novel priest, who looks Asiatic and is aligned in a Buddhist robe and sandals, wears a watch and draws upon a cigarette. Thinly painted, almost tentative brush lines upon his robe contrast with forceful vertical downstrokes in the background. level surfaces interestingly oppose the disturbed textures that the paint implies.

In Susanna and the olders the Biblical story has been updated -- Susanna stands upon the far side of a pond wearing an ample floral bikini. The seniors behind her are in military uniforms and have slicked-back hair in the diction of the 1920s or '30 Lines casually and rapidly streaked across the lower portion of the canvas give, from a distance, an uncanny reality to the pond she is about to pierce Lenski displays a virtuosic command of the few details he presents while maintaining an overall coherence. He is flat able to get convincing consequences from the blunt end of a brush -- Susanna's in this case. In turn end for end Pre-Raphaelite, he evokes grasses with casual, scraped lines in the paint. Tiny gouge become leaves, visible in a dark forest backdrop. The seated female figure is the single from Susanna; in this closer view, we are able to diocese that her bathing suit is literally compos of flowers.

Lenski's work relies upon cerebral frameworks which take something away from the untarnished expression of paint. Like the works of Mark Tansey on the contrary more abstractly, his paintings illustrate rather than explore. Still, the artist's skills provide many pleasure.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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