Wojciech Fangor at Mitchell Algus - painting exhibition; New York, New York

This display of targetlike abstractions from 1967-70 serv to reintroduce the 70-year-old Polish Op artist. Born in Warsaw, Fangor had by dint of the late 1950s developed a whole theory of revers perspective or what he called P.I.S. - "Positive illusory Space." He arrived at his signature ultimate parts of blurred, seemingly spray-painted (but actually brushed) geometric forms as early as 1956 in Poland and by dint of 1958 was often hanging his paintings as freestanding simple bodys Having first visited the States in 1962 Fangor was included in William Seitz's famous display "The Responsive Eye" at MOMA in 1965 After living for a while in Paris and London, the artist immigrated to America in 1966 The paintings at Algus were execut in Madison, NJ (hence their titles like as M-31) while the artist taught at Fairleigh-Dickinson University. In 1970 Fangor had a retrospective at the Guggenheim with an superior catalogue essay by Margit Rowell. Then began a lengthy descent into relative obscurity - a situation which Algus, who also lately resuscitated Harold Stevenson's homoerotic mural The fresh Adam (1962) in this lively storefront gallery, has done a great deal of to rectify.

Fangor now present the appearances like an essential precedent for younger neo-Op and Color Field artists like Peter Schuyff and Carl Ostendarp. The paintings at Algus all depict pulsing orbs or doughnutlike shapes in square formats; oftentimes using only two colors in concentric bands, Fangor achieved a crafty blurring ring of shades by dint of painting wet on wet with small brushes. Unlike Noland's "Targets," Fangor's throbbing allusive figures do not sink into stained clods but rather seem to reverberate on the outside into space. The Polish artist's canvases from this period are usually gesso and not ever executed in acrylic, but in oil; three on the outside of five of the works upon view were also touched up through Fangor in 1992. M-40 (1969) a pale purply-pink vapor on a buff-colored ground, reveals itself upon long scrutiny to be rather brushy and diaphanous near the edges; the pink becomes infinitesimally denser and more solid as it reaches the middle of the canvas. Inevitably these works have gained a kind of stoned, psychedelic elan. The day I was there, single young artist remarked to another, "Let's take a little acid," to which his companion replied, "This individual would be good for mushrooms."

The Algus present to view made me want to learn more about the whole predicament of post-World War II Polish modernists. I gaze forward especially to seeing more of Fangor's '50 hand-bills and mosaics for the Warsaw train station. The artist now lives in Santa Fe and makes massive Picassoid nakeds evocative of the master's 1906 pre-Demoiselles manner. Algus says he is planning to exhibit one of Fangor's early-'70s wave paintings (some of which reach 210 inches in width) nearest season.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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