Martha Keller at Rosenberg & Kaufman - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

It's hard to believe that anyone could make interesting paintings of stapes these days. in the wake of Frank Stella's use of stapes to reinforce objectnes Agnes Martin's to meditate upon repetition and subtle variation, Sean Scully's to order and make expressionist gesture and color, and Ros Bleckner's to summon forth nostalgia for an era when painting stapes was heroic (to name just a not many instances of stripe painting), single would think that the motif was bonny much used up. Not with equal reason Martha Keller, who has been painting stripes for a while, continues to make them interesting and visually compounded in paintings which build on the legacies of these other artists.

Here, she exhibited paintings from a series begun in 1993 titled Fautrice (which the pres release says is an Italian noun meaning "one who makes female authorship possible"). With narrow vertical stapes that stretch out from top to bottom, Keller's paintings are somewhat reminiscent of Bleckner's of the early 1980 As in Bleckner's so-called Op paintings, Keller's thin, soft-edg verticals appear to vibrate, making a vague association to the flickering of television or computer shields And like Bleckner's, Keller's present the appearance to emanate an internal light. on the contrary Keller's paintings are more complicated formally and les specific in content; they integrate many modernist devices -- drips, brushstrokes, flatness, gesticulation process -- and the connotations that tend hitherward with them. Initially, Keller's stripes appear to stand on the outside as ridges of paint. upon closer observation, one sees her thin, transparent colors that make flat, level surfaces. Sometimes the weave of the canvas exhibits through and sometimes her paint -- mixed with wax or zinc dust -- has a solid, matte finish.

Her paintings are structur visually and conceptually upon the rational order associated with geometric painting. Square formats enhance a faculty of perception of stability. Juxtaposed with stability, however, is change Nothing in her paintings appears entirely fixed. The slightly vibrating surfaces instigate the viewer into moving around -- back and forth and side to side. From afar, multicolored stripes retire into allover splotches of color that undulate in and without Up close, the surfaces flatten as thinly applied, fluid paint, matte color, or the weave of the linen become apparent. Her paints -- a certain number of mixed by Keller herself from dusted graphite, zinc or wax -- throw back light differently, so that their color and intensity change when the light falling upon them varies.

Color and size differentiate these paintings. in Tao Wow Now (1995) the harmonious pastels -- pinks, virids and blues -- work in tension with the shifts in space and perception; whereas the acidic, discordant color-purple and lime virid -- of They, in occupation (of the whole view) (1996) reinforces the unsettling impression. All in all, Keller's stripes manage to elicit a surprising range of emotional inflection and visual complexity.

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