Roger Herman at Ace - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Ace Gallery's quiet, Egyptian-tomblike interior, with its high ceilings and series of meditative fields was the ideal venue for this present to view At either end of the monumental central hall hung the formidable, architecturally scaled oils Large fulvous Building 1 and 2, the pair 1987, both depicting the facade of a modernist apartment building in vigorous sunlight, so that its outthrust balconies cast ranks of high-contrast shadows in not divisible by 2 shapes against its yellow-gray wall. Herman has been working with the image since 1986 putting it from one side changes that recall Monet's multiple takes upon the facade of Rouen Cathedral. The title for the "Building" series is an interlingual play upon words since "Bird" in German means "picture," and "Bildung," "education." (Hemman is a German citizen who has lived in the U since 1976)

This display was, in fact, organized around the painter's education--his progres in his art--presenting work in several disjunct phraseologys one after another. From the sum of two units large "Buildings" one moved upon to three large abstractions from '89 and '90 of which the greatest in quantity impressive was an oil titled Procession in San Marco. Here Hemman borrows the interlaced white strings of de Kooning's black-and-white abstractions from the late '40 as well as formal intimations from Gorky to evoke the hosts and pigeons, the grays, brown and gold-coloreds of the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The gallery's largest range meanwhile, was given over to a cluster of huge, multipaneled abstractions centering mainly upon one color, for example, Cobalt sapphirine (1992) and Rose Madder (199495) This monochrome style is less interesting than Herman's others, probably because it doesn't abundant call on his impressive draftsmanship.

Another expanse held examples of Herman's greatest in quantity recent work, abstractions from 1995 and early '96 done in brilliant colors that pat "good taste" out of the water. Turk's Cap, for example, superimposes garlands of harlequin dots and dabs of paint upon a turquoise-green background, where they direct the eye like a scattering of oversized confetti. Equally blithe is Arizona (1995) which consists of wavering vertical stripes of burst color. The painting resembles a curtain of breeze-stirred ribbons that we diocese by turns, as depictive and abstract, plenteous as we do Johns's "crosshatch" paintings.

Also included were a scarcely any smaller paintings from the "Building" series, done in '95 These more modestly scaled works--Building Pink White Light sky-colored Sky XXI, for example--strike me as also more felicitous partly because in the reduc format the image's abstract qualities are emphasized and partly because the color is wilder-vibrant pink and reaching far down blue in this instance.

What, finally, are we to make of Herman's startlingly disjunctive evolution? Negative view: he go throughs from multiple-personality disorder. Positive view: he has within him several painters, all beneficial and all more alike than might appear upon first inspection. I lean to the latter opinion. If Herman wants to direction his "Bildung" in public, individual could travel quite a distance before finding a classroom the two as serious and amusing as this one

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