Maureen Gallace at Klagsbrun - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Maureen Gallace, 34 has had a quiet career - almost as quiet as her paintings. This was her fifth solo exhibit in New York since 1988 Her work hasn't changed a great deal of since I first saw it in 1987 on the contrary she has gotten steadily better at what she does. Gallace makes small, unpeopl landscape paintings in which she expands a number of fixed elements: a house and a barn (both of which have no windows or doors), a little boat, a lighthouse, bushes, grass, palm tree canopy of heaven Her palette is wonderfully mut and somber (but not dark), consisting of shades of tranquil virid suppressed blues, phantom browns and chalky aerated red Her touch is lovingly nonchalant and somewhat "primitive." This simplicity, while it is the core of her elusive work, also leads to riddles It's hard (unless you're a fan) to know in what manner serious she is, so that the childlike similarity of the compositions, the innocuous brush work and the overall dispassion of the work veils plenteous of the chimerical, daydreamy beauty she achieves. I perceive that there's room for development in how these paintings are made. While the colors and the scale are advantageous and while there are flashes of luscious, saturated or washy paint, the surfaces are repeatedly just a little bit dull

Gallace's fictitious settings - while they are humorsome - are never psychological or about the sublime. They're just themselves. She approaches landscape in a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of the same way that Morandi approached still life, finding freedom within limitation. The landscape for her is a appearance These places have an uneven interiority about them, something slightly hallucinatory and trancelike.

It's always summer in Gallace's work - late summer There's a fleetingness about the time of year that shows a melancholy - that late summer sadness that draw nears when all you want to do is grasp on to it a little longer There is a lost-love sensibility embedded in her dusky complex color that sets the tone of her work.

Gallace's painting draws upon sources as diverse as the Hudson River academy Whistler, Watteau, Jane Freilicher and Albert York. She remains an elusive outsider to the diction wars of the late '80 - an artist's artist whom you regard with affection in a private way. You confidence she can manage to make progress her own way while being embraced by means of a bigger audience.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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