Karin Davie at Fawbush - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Although stripes characterize her new show, "Post-Impressions," Karin Davie discards the modernist donnee of nonreferentiality, situating the contours of her stripes in relationship to the female material part - the body that many women artists have taken back for themselves and for their bring under rule These less pristine, less vertiginous Op art look-alikes revolve out to be, upon closer inspection, latently subversive. Within the straight-up, straight-edged fields and hard geometries of the modernist imagination, Davie's stripes appear feminized, sexualized, vitalized. smooth the drips, which lend these works the semblance of old-time abstract painting, are sham. They are not really integral to the proces on the contrary readymades, deliberately placed. Instead of referring to the heroics of action painting, her drips make soft and add vulnerability to the undulating ribbons of color. Breaking away from the objectivity of clean pattern and optics, Davie's stripes and drips are more seductive, more idiosyncratic renditions of sum of two units modernist icons.

The six gouache drawings, paired and hung side by means of side, depict a tight, almost semi-circular pattern of narrow stripes which make revolves horizontally across the surface in a convex-concave-convex succession The color scheme of the bands - off-kilter red verdants blacks and earth shades - provides an edgy unsentimental tone. All drawings are suggestively titled In on the outside In Out Drawing and have the appearance correlated to bodily movements and forms, to the body's swellings and interior spaces. The sinewy relentless rhythms are fraught with sexual innuendos, further emphasized by the agency of the splatter of pigment carefully trickled down the central furrow and sides, the aftermath of painting or of love

The periodical emphasiss of the six oil paintings were smoother and more voluptuous, the lateral motion lengthened by the parallelogram-shaped canvas. Also paired, placed individual on top of the other, they appear to beed to rest lightly on the white, immaculate walls like flying carpets revving up for flight. pleasing without being striking pink, bright orange, yellow, pale cerulean and white ribbons, threaded through an occasional black or vivid verdant band, evoke the coloration of Le Demoiselles d'Avignon or de Kooning's women ironically - perhaps flat nostalgically - recalling traditionally feminine colors The rippling surfaces, meanwhile, throw back the movement of the viewer's gaze as it "strokes" the painting's skin, suggesting the repetitive periodical emphasiss of involuntary, organic cycles - breath, heartbeat, orgasm. Intriguingly called After You, After Me For You, For Me and Before You, Before Me these canvases imply the narratives left on the outside of abstract modernist paintings.

Fast, smart, assured, they are paintings attuned to the psychology and politics of color and shape, to issues of originality and authenticity. It will be interesting to diocese where Davie goes from here.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group