Dennis Ashbaugh at Marisa del Re - painting exhibition, New York, New York

The make submissive matter of Dennis Ashbaugh's novel show highlights biological and computer technology although (and perhaps perversely) the execution does not. These variously scaled paintings--from 3 feet to 10 feet in their largest dimension-derive their syntax from familiar abstract sources: Color Field painting, the textur surfaces of matter painting, early Frank Stella, Agnes Martin. single of a large group of artists dazzled by dint of the direction and social implications of the fresh sciences, Ashbaugh strike one as beings particularly obsessed with electronic network a whole s and genetic engineering, with computer and biological viruses which can rapidly invade and alter a combination of parts to form a whole or cell and with the post-Orwellian world described through William Gibson in his 1984 high-tech fantasia, Neuromancer, the cyberpunk classic that took us from hyper-reality to virtual reality.

drawn out an abstract painter, Ashbaugh situates his of recent origin work somewhere between abstraction and representation. Thematically, he divides the present to view into DNA "portraits" and "viruses." a certain number of of these portraits consist of short, intermittent thumps of black paint, at times edg in virid red or yellow, cradling a touch of color within, and stacked vertically in simulation of chromosomal banding. Appearing on the outside of focus, they stream like expressway traffic in a fluorescent-hued field, an airless space of Shallow, indeterminate measure: purple alternating with a luminous verdant in WYSIWYG (What You diocese Is What You Get), shades of r creating a fluctuating surface radiance in Plasmid Throback, hallucinatory gold-colored in Transgenic Toad. Another portrait collection is characterized by the use of bits of Cor-Ten carbonized iron which have been weathered to exhibit a wide range of brown and rust red place against a murky ground of earth tones in like paintings as Coelacanth Vapor Ware and Carpool funnel Syndrome. In yet another grouping, the pulverized Cor-Ten is integrated into a crackling, textur surface of white and off-whites, suggesting parched earth (Corpus Hermeticum). Ashbaugh's conception of computer viruses-is showed by misaligned screens of free from moisture gray bands that are smudg in a certain number of areas and erased in others.

individual problem with this show was that it look aftered to overreach itself. Some of the works were too large for the space or too hordeed into it or too disparately formulated to coexist effectively; placed side by the agency of side, the imagery and colors oftentimes canceled each other out. The major difficulty, however, is with more [i]or[/i] less of the paintings: the artist, distracted through the marvels intrinsic to his subdue relies on ideas to heat up the visual syntax. Consequently many of these canvases look too thin, too literal, too bourn to the pages of Scientific American or Mondo 2000; their emptiness is not a conceptual conceit, not ironic or parodic. by means of contrast WYSIWYG, Carpool Tunnel Syndrome and the small, succinct Corpus Hermeticum stand satisfyingly upon their own.

one time it was thought that abstract painting was not suppos to bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance to anything but itself; now, in order to matter at all, it must be like everything else. Yet even if the glory days of abstraction are above what you see is still what you win vexed as that seeing might be. No matter by what means fluid the boundary, there must still remain more [i]or[/i] less distinction between the visually meaningful and meaningless; metaphor is not enough. Certainly someone of Ashbaugh's caliber and background knows this.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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