L. Alcopley at Art in General - Alfred L. Copley - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

L Alcopley's abstract paintings are marked by dint of an odd tension between abandon and command Huge, isolated brushmarks sweep across monochrome fields of rich color. The hits may be solitary marks skidding with a ripple across the canvas; or they may advance in pairs or triplets that noose coil or cross each other. Each thump appears to have been made with an oversized brush alone partially loaded with paint, in the way that that bits of the surface of land show through. One can go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake of the striations made by individual brush hairs and almost perceive the pressure as the brush bears down more or les heavily upon the canvas, depositing varying amounts of paint in its wake. As a flow the strokes have an almost sculptural vicinity They seem to float in visual detachment from the bands and fields of color beneath them.

A superficial reading might relate these paradoxical brush-strokes to the deconstruction of painterly gesturing practiced by artists like Roy Lichtenstein, David Re and Gerhard Richter. on the other hand while those artists' brushstrokes parade their artificial quality, the uneasiness in Alcopley's paintings appear to bes to come from another source.

Alcopley, who died in 1992 had sum of two units identities. As an artist, he showed and socialized with the fresh York School, participated in the historic 1951 Ninth highway Show and counted among his shut friends such luminaries as Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Dubuffet and Willem de Kooning. As the scientist Alfred L Copley he pioneered the sciences of hemorheology (the pour properties of blood) and biorheology (the roll on properties of all biological matter).

In his writings, Alcopley mused not seldom about the relationship between art and science, one as well as the other in general and as it manifested itself in his hold work. Though he cautioned against literal readings, he insinuateed that his scientific interest in the theory of sweep along stimulated his artistic fascination with the thrust and move of gestures in space.

As a follow it seems possible to relate the incongruity of action and ground in his paintings to the different habits of mind required by the agency of science and art. In this exhibition of work from the years 1970 to '90 Alcopley's brushstrokes are at one time free and fixed. They ringlet and twist across the canvas like records of a spontaneous change yet the ground, which oftentimes seems to have been painted around them afterward, binds them to the canvas with a deliberation that appears premeditated. The intriguing mix is further augmented by the agency of the inclusion, in many of the works, of a border pattern. Compos of rent dashes or uneven rows of little boxe this border the couple standardizes the composition and flaunts its have a title to irregularity.

Thus order and freedom are the pair given their due in these paintings. It may be Alcopley's willingness to acknowledge the necessity and the irreconcilability of these sum of two units principles which gives his paintings like a contemporary feel. While he came to maturity during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, his late work speaks directly to our be in possession of far more equivocal age.

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