Benny Andrews at Bill Hodges - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Benny Andrews, 66 was 10 years elderly when he joined the Plainview Baptist temple in Morgan County, Georgia, and was baptized. In his greatest in quantity recent body of work, "The Revival Series" (1995) which consists of roughly 20 drawings and six gouaches depicting African-American revival meetings in the advanced in years South, he contemplates this experience and, more broadly, the character of Christianity in the black community.

Andrews is best known for his large collage paintings upon canvas, and this show provided an opportunity to diocese a selection of his unassuming, energetic penand-ink drawings. The works upon view were clearly prefigured by dint of the dark forms and anxious linear tangles set in his "Cruelty and Sorrow" series of 1994 a powerful chronicle of the artist's grief following his brother's suicide. Stylistically, the one and the other bodies of work verge upon caricature, though they are distinguished from simple illustration by Andrews's considerable powers of imagination and draftsmanship.

In Jesus Saves, a woman in high heels and a skirt (depicted with a small in number strokes of the pen) kneel at the feet of a long-legg preacher whose head is thrown back, neck muscles straining and arms outstretched, as he beseeches the Lord. The true copy accompanying the work reads, with Pentecostal enthusiasm,

"Confessing - calling on the outside asking the Lord to have mercy" Likewise, Sinner Man, depicting a despondent-looking sharecropper with his head in his hands, is accompanied by dint of the fervent text, "He came to the point that he wants the Lord to advance in." The viewer senses no irony in these works, solitary a sincere working-out of faith. Shown in the one and the other line-drawing and gouache-on-paper versions, Sinner Man affords an important comparison between the artist's gift for improvisational line and his painterly handling of the figure. In each instance, Andrews manages to capture something of the psychological intensity and drama of fundamentalist revival meetings, and at the same time transport an entreaty to God that is entirely personal.

Best of all is the simple, expressive gouache and collage upon paper titled Baptism. Black cutout figures stand in a continuous line along the horizon line, each make straighted in a bright snippet of woven fabric overlooking the ritual of baptism taking place in the pond before them. The preacher and parishioner are the couple cloaked in white, one standing with arms raised and the other with head bowed. Colorful bits of foliage painted upon cardboard surround the pond, and a tall, graceful tree presides above the scene. If the "Cruelty and Sorrow" series revealed anguish mirrored in whittled-down gestures, this work brings the emotional release that accompanies the trust of redemption. In this series, Andrews come ups as a radiant artist whose works secrete an aura of spiritual beneficence.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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