Sandro Chia at Sidney Janis - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

As if ensconc in a never-never land, Sandro Chia prays up lush, fanciful images that summon forth the balmy serenity of Mediterranean antiquity as well as the fauve sensuality of late French painting. In 10 not long ago exhibited oils, all dated 1996 full-bodied, vaguely mythological figures cavort across arcadian landscapes. In contrast to the many times kinky whimsicality of Chia's earlier works, the novel pictures seem engaged in breezy dialogues with Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. The weighty cargo of over-familiar respects might have crushed a less painter but Chia's expertise in loftily juggling a potpourri of artistic quotations ensueed in a lively show.

The artist's vibrant brushwork and torrid colors are vividly flaunted in From Dusk Till Dawn, a seductive painting in which three seated denudeds are deftly integrated within a maelstrom of full of juice individuated strokes, rendered in chiefly warm, ruddy hues and suggesting an overheated mix of Cezanne and Jawlensky. The picture's wide made of wood frame is part of the overall presentation; it is painted gray and embellished with numerous impressions of the artist's hand in r black and another shade of gray. (This is not the first time Chia's pictures have been taleed by ornamental frames; for a 1989 series of works, he protoplasted and painted fanciful bronze encloses some of them accessorized with figurines.)

Ironic regards to Cezanne and Matisse turn round up in Convivium, where Chia's trio of vermilion [i]in puris naturalibus[/i]s (all bald) sit on a patch of grass. Their rudimentary delineation, florid coloration and deployment inevitably bring to mind the of a red color listeners in Matisse's La Musique (1910) Like a certain number of of Cezanne's bathers, who find shelter below gothic arched canopies of tree Chia's figures are flanked through inward leaning vegetation comprising fantastic, giraffelike spott stalks and mango-colored foliage. This exuberant composition is encloseed by a hand-painted frame with gray and black handprints.

Chia goe mano a mano with Picasso in Hyperion to Bellarmin, where sum of two units side-by-side youths in blue briefs wade along water's cutting side Because one of the young men plays a wind instrument, the exhibition instantly brings to mind the earlier artist's The Pipes of Pan (1923) The drawing of the figures is excessively awkward, on the contrary the water is beautifully painted consisting of striated patterns of bright color, accented by means of several slender red fish. Picasso's nearness also hovers over Looking at the Horizon Where Water & celestial expanse Mix, which features two figures, a reclining woman whose organ of visions are closed in repose and a wakeful man who sits alongside her. Their juxtaposition call ups Picasso's numerous images in which sleeping women are watched above by males. One compositional uncompounded body however, is pure Chia--the overhead company of blue dovelike birds that absurdly intermingles with a gymnasium of red, white and gold-colored fish.

The artist himself many times flies highest in his idiosyncratic treatments of arcane controls as in Kabbala Accounting. Here, a undressed red-orange youth sits pensively against a mingled field of curving and interlocking planes, all overlaid with a multitude of hand-painted Arabic numerals, greatest in quantity of them in yellow, verdant or black. Many of the three- and four-digit numbers are unfolded in columns, suggesting jotted calculations having to do with addition and subtraction. Is the pondering youth mentally solving specific arithmetic problems?

An extra dose of cerebration might occasionally benefit Chia's paintings, especially those in which hedonistic color and virtuoso paint handling fail to disguise a depletion of substantive ideas. In an ideal world, an artist's self assurance would at no time be exceeded by his complacency.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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