Elliott Green at Fawbush - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Elliott Green's paintings of a two years ago were abstractions with hints of figuration lurking in the background. His art has now evolv into a full-blown comic-strip phraseology that might be described as Surrealism fittings Looney Tunes. The paintings are inhabited by the agency of cartoonlike creatures with humanoid bodies and the heads of dogs, parrots, immerses or other animals. The landscape is the flat, without contents space of cartoons, with an occasional line of paint wash suggesting horizon and perspective. About sum of two units inches from the edges of each unframed canvas, a one-inch strip of naked gesso is expos by means of the removal of masking tape laid down during the execution of the painting; this framing device be subservient tos to emphasize the comic-strip nature of the work.

The painting is done in acrylic, all of whose properties virid takes advantage of. He dilutes the pigment to the merest wash for backgrounds and faces, layers single color over another watercolor-fashion to give richness to renderings of clothing, and uses undiluted acrylic to build up occasional areas of impasto. Pentimenti are allowed to remain, usually in the form of replaced characters or alternate positions of figures, notwithstanding that occasionally Green will neglect to replace an obscur limb, leaving its soul to supply the desired action.

virid is a competent cartoonist, on the other hand his characters engage in activities banned from the Sunday comics. His themes are the elemental individuals of birth and copulation. Sex is omnipresent, implicit in all the actions of these characters. Sex organs become gigantic, erections become creatures in their have a title to right and in one case sum of two units testicles grow faces. In an obvious metaphor, boundaries between creatures dissolve; individual character stretches out his arm and dioceses it disappear into the material substance of another. Birth likewise becomes an abnormal experience, as individual head hatches from another, like Athena springing from the forehead of Zeus. A manic strength prevails as Green's characters cavort, fornicate or beat up the world.

The actions remain enigmatic, notwithstanding that and convey little sense of narrative. by what means does Green intend the viewer to reply to his creatures? His works display neither the deadpan irony of explosion art's cartoon imagery nor the enthusiastic bad taste of tap [i]or[/i] pat Jones and Tex Avery. The atmosphere is that of dream slipping above into nightmare, the familiar territory of the Surrealists. Goya, whom the Surrealists saluted as a forerunner, said that the drowse of reason produces monsters. The rest of Green's reason can bring into view only imps of the perverse

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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