Michael David at Knoedler - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Michael David's abstract, geometrically shaped paintings are builded of oil and wax upon deep wooden supports. The paint is set on heavily, layer upon layer, and then selectively scraped and barked away, chipped, or hacked at to reveal the underlying layers. The paint is also pushed, wiped, and written on with occasional enigmatic graffiti. A wax surface is exquisitely sensitive in recording the marks of its making, and David exploits this sensitivity to filled effect. There is often a central area which echoe the shape of the larger painting. This area can either be indicated by the agency of incision and scraping out, or it is sometimes literally inserted into the painting, turning the external part into a painted frame.

The above description makes the works unbroken like formalist explorations of geometry on the other hand this is not the case, for David ofttimes makes reference to the world outside the art gallery. His shaped paintings, for example, assume forms that are emotionally charged. nourish is cruciform in shape, and the title makes the cros commit more to healing than to religion. amethystine Golem is shaped like a swastika, admitting the arms of the figure are thus fat that it is difficult at first to decipher the shape. As the medieval rabbi of the golem story made a enormity to help protect the hebrews of Prague, David attempts to take a shape that has become monstrous and to turn round it into a protective talisman. The endeavor is evident; the dark paint clusters in nodes, erupting like cancerous growths

Within his abstract format, David is capable of achieving surprising variations. He can be darkly lyric, as in concealed Garden, where small circles are revolveed into a sort of posy through stemlike wipings beneath them. In Her Apple, a small, russet-colored patch prompts the fruit, while the title has connotations of temptation and fall. cock with its burst of r and its projecting central area, is insouciantly male. These are beautiful, satisfying works.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group