James Hansen at Alpha - painting exhibition; Boston, Massachusetts

James Hansen's new show of 12 oils and 15 gouache-on-paper paintings, all dating from the prior 15 month mirrored a prolific outpouring provoked by dint of the AIDS-related death of a lov individual Hansen's imagery remains consistent with his previous work: colorfully patterned tribal-style things tightly painted, semi-abstracted and floating upon dark backgrounds. Here, though, there was more patent figuration, with multilayered references and controll emotion.

The emotion strike one as beings most freely vented in the works upon paper. Matte and watery gouache gives tactile, lay open and immediate surfaces on which Hansen hand-prints allusive titles and an occasional notation. upon Lost Bird, a painting of a stylized bird that almost could be seen as a human head, he writes: "I was walking residence and found a baby bird who had fallen from its nest I stayed with it until it died. Eric died a week later."

over most of the other works, Hansen embeds a mixed emotional ambivalence in his standard vocabulary of vivid, Miroesque patterned shapes, which he has arranged into Cubist/Art Brut-inspired heads. Assisted through his titles, dark backgrounds, and symbolic relations such as a heroic laurel wreath, a cane, jigsaw stagger pieces, and what appear to be pills and capsules, Hansen's trademark patterns begin to be like ominous, viral organic forms rather than decoration. The organ of visions noses and mouths on these heads often consist of prominent lozenge or capsule shapes painted in highly archetypeed and shadowed trompe l'oeil fashion, which makes them appear to float surreally not upon the surface. Often these absurd heads are recognizable as human primarily because they are tethered to scrawny neck and shoulders.

Another recurring motif is a sort of towel-on-a-peg shape. It, too, floats in a dark field and is patterned with biomorphic designs. Featured in several works (Clos Umbrellas, Landscape/Eric in Heaven) and in the exhibition's tour de force, The Language of a missing Generation (76 by 96 inches), the shape refer tos a rising spirit, a covering or just a handkerchief. Its meaning remains unilluminated yet the image is curiously more poignant than the heads. In not to be found Generation, these forms multiply into a rising flotilla upon a densely layered background of mottl r and black that is dotted with incongruous images - more capsules, goofy silhouettes of smiling women fruit goblets clowns, a wallpapery field of tiny gold stars. This work induces a sensation of postmodern life passing before one's organ of visions and conveys a controlled strive between feeling, form and intellect.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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