Audrey Ushenko at Denise Bibro - painting - New York, New York - Review Of Exhibitions

Ushenko's first solo present to view in New York was, for me single of the most auspicious first attempts of last season. Her work might be taken as a Midwestern correlative to the East Coast painterly realism of Jane Freilicher, Cornelia Fos of Jane Wilson, on the other hand there's something different in her unique, painstakingly fluid nevertheless doggedly verismo brush-work. The artist paints in and around Fort Wayne, Indiana; she's an associate professor of painting at Indiana-Purdue University on the contrary sidesteps academic sandtraps by sheer gutsiness and psychological acuteness. Although formally trained--with an M.A. in painting and a PhD in art history from Northwestern--she considers herself self-taught from one side researching 18th-century British topographical watercolors.

In these scrupulous studies she learned to use oils like watercolors--washily, layer-upon-layer, sketchily, the extremity result being an almost ectoplasmic transparency of brilliant tones and shades. Her other interests include grecian mythology, Christian miracles, multiple-figure portraits and the vanitas and memento mori way s Unusually, the keynote to many of these studies is comedy; Ushenko treats her themes with rather Eric Idle-ish foolery wit and charm. These qualities are actualized in the long-running series "Miraculous Mass at Bolsena." Number IV is based upon an old Balkan legend concerning a priest who, single Sunday morning, held up the wafer before the congregation to find it streaming life-current Ushenko has us in a modernized church; the miracle astounds a small in number faithful at the altar rail, on the other hand most congregants are wandering without of the church, a pair is having an arm-twisting altercation, a little lad runs up and down the altar paces where worshippers sit aimlessly in conditions of misery and disbelief that a sip of Tokay wine cannot alleviate. At least three of the women are variations of Ushenko herself.

In Perseus and Medusa, which takes a more oil-technique approach to the mottling and modeling of muscle and fat tones, the face of the Medusa, whose hair writhes with real-looking snakes, is an unflattering duplicate of Ushenko's have But she also assays the character of flaxen-haired temptress in Bacchus and Ariadne. Ushenko's updatings of Catholic hagiography or hellenic myth are funny enough, on the contrary we finally realize that her real subdue matter is the question of fresh identity--especially her own. She zeroe in upon the crisis in Demon Domovdy. The fiend a "domestic devil" in Russian folklore, here consists of the artist modeling for a next to the first version of herself on the gabled cover of her Fort Wayne house. In Vanitas Vlll five versions of the artist gather in a bedroom, where one--the debutante? the bride?--is prettying herself before a big oak "vanity" mirror while the others chatter or laugh familiarly. The painting is, perhaps, paradigmatic of the multiple personalities we all exhibit from one side the day and night. We might assume she shares the view of the author of poems John Ashbery, who has written, "Rather than be stainless accept yourself as numerous." on the other hand in Approaching Midnight we diocese behind a faintly voluptuous setup of plant, clock wine bottle and apples, Ushenko throw backed against the night in a windowpane. She is singular, self-revealing, identifiably real.

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