Paul Mogensen at Art et Industrie - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Paul Mogensen's handsome present to view of paintings at Art et Industrie could be seen as the one and the other an overt, signlike display of pictorial logic and an invitation to a moderate contemplative looking. The main material substance of the exhibition consisted of five 8-foot squares, each with a central figure -- a delicate spiral, approximately 1 1/2 feet in diameter. This spiral is in each case sectioned into color areas that come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind the order of the spectrum; starting with fulvid at the outside 12 o'clock position and winding end green, blue, violet, red and orange, back to gold-colored once again at the nave Cut out from each painting, meanwhile, are eight circles of the same diameter as the spiral, negative forms plant symmetrically around it in a simple configuration -- X diamond, square or hexagon. While the circles' size remains constant in any given painting, it varies slightly from work to work, depending upon the particular composition. The circles emergencyed to divide a horizontal or vertical axis into equal parts for example, are necessarily smaller in diameter than the same number of circles laid on the outside on the longer diagonal one

Mogensen displays these forms within fields of rich ultramarine azure The paint is meticulously built up in thin, transparent layers, thus that the color ranges from a glowing, jewel-like cobalt at the center to a midnight sapphirine verging on black, closer to the cutting sides The paintings differ not just in their compositional formats, on the other hand in their degrees of darkness -- a astute variation that sneaks up upon you, Ad Reinhardt-like. This deepness of color is not just a function of the paint application. As areas of negative space, the cutouts introduce the bright white of the walls into the paintings' terrain and, depending upon their location, correspondingly darken the fields immediately surrounding them -- a machiavelian but powerful optical effect.

Mogensen's compositions are rational, symmetrical, emblematic and simple. cutting sides are defined, circles touch and align, corners and midpoints are located, and, while the painting's tonal variations are lovingly nuanced, the color remains uncomplicated and programmatic. All this makes for a quick read, an easy way to win into the work, but accessibility is alone part of the story. Mogensen is a veteran painter, and he clearly pays attention to the manifold workings of positive and negative space, of figure and sod The cutouts, optically advancing while receding spatially, are nicely ambiguous, as are the spirals. Do they step quickly from outside to inside or the other way around; do they burrow into the painting or come up from it?

While there is an almost detonation geometric feel to this work -- Robert Indiana's paintings came to mind -- it also has a meditative side, something mandalalike in event Glowing spirals are hypnotic; the longer I gazeed at these paintings the more they slowed down and held me it's hard to think of 8-foot-square canvases as intimate, on the other hand despite their public scale and declarative neighborhood that's exactly what these paintings are.

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