Catherine Lee at Galerie Lelong - art exhibit; New York, New York

Catherine to leeward began as a painter, and in her new abstract metal or fiberglass wall reliefs her regards remain coloristic and pictorial. Minimalish shapes with jagged and curv outlines dare easy geometric classification. Lee's external realitys are made in sues or singly, each usually comprising sum of two units or more sections that fit together in the manner of a mystify And because the sections are all different shapes, the lines of conjunction can be true dynamic - suggesting ragged fissure in the earth, for example, or a horizon of overlapping mesas. Beautifully installed at Lelong the single and serial shapes took command of the blank expanses of walls, demarcating territories that reach forthed well beyond the works themselves. Ellsworth Kelly seizes a vista in a similar manner, with shapes carefully delineated to signal their declension from nature.

In Lee's iron turn back 14 oxidized cast-iron components, each slightly below the size of an adult human being, lean against the wall in a horizontal line. Resembling apostrophes with their points to the floor, they are deceptively simple - a monumental mental repetition of form, an overall uniformity of color. on the contrary within the oxidized surfaces, ordinary accidents of facture provide adequate supply of surface variation. And there is a sly push-pull movement, as the pieces appear first to put in motion to the left, through a rhythmic repetition of swells and then to the right, like hunched processional figures.

Other Voices consists of four lines of 16 objects, each line homogeneous in shape and material and roughly the same color. Burnished lead makes up the topmost row; beneath it are similar rows of cent bronze and iron objects. The forms have sufficiency of angles, one sweeping 1 and four deep, rich colors. In fact, the colors here are more light-filled than at any time before in Lee's work, smooth the blackest surfaces casting a lustrous sheen. She approachs up with blackened or pale virid bronze, reddened iron, as well as the classically turquoise cent - all of which remind of vulcanian transformations. Lee wields her patinas like paint, applying the various chemical solutions, or plane simply water, while heating the particulars to speed the process.

The earthy black, verdant and red of Quemado, along with its angular forms, call up the terrains of the southwestern U - indeed, many of these pieces recall the spare, carefully distilled landscapes of O'Keeffe Ore comprises 10 masss of fiberglass resin and cast iron, the corners mainly obtuse angles that give interior freedom to each repeating form. Best is the light, of gold hue in Ore, which tend hitherwards from the reflected patina of the iron and the opaque be incandescent of the fiberglass "skin." This living color infuses a faculty of perception of immediacy and place into Lee's work. to leeward thus continues, modernist fashion, to upright abstraction for its potential to be extremely specific about one as well as the other formal and emotional matters.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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