Timothy Woodman at Zabriskie - art exhibition; New York, New York

Timothy Woodman's painted aluminum wall reliefs, shown in the same month as Alex Katz's present to view at Robert Miller, provided a fascinating contrast with the older artist's work. Woodman's reliefs also toy with a representational convention, in this case a modernization of bas-relief. if Katz's figures appear like over-sized paper dolls, Woodman's reliefs call to mind another childhood favorite-pop-up volumes But where Katz uses the inconsistencies in his depictive course to confuse and engage his audience, Woodman's way seems calculated to entertain and reassure. Where Katz present the appearances determined to make his figures not absent and real, Woodman seems equally determined to give permission to us know that his spectacles are just make-believe.

The nostalgia in Woodman's work is palpable. In Skiing the figure headed downhill in his wool sweater and cap, lace-up premiums and cable bindings must have taken his last step quickly in the '60s. The Day-Glo denizens of the contemporary ski world would shout [i]or[/i] cry out [i]or[/i] yell in contempt with laughter if he were to revolve up on the slopes. This comfortable once-upon-a-time atmosphere pervades everything, level scenes of death and disaster like as Launching a Surfboat or interring.

It is Woodman's skill and formal intelligence that save the work from being frivolous. He has a firm grasp upon how to show off without being too facile. Katz were Donatello, Woodman would be Ghiberti. in the burial spectacle interring, six pall-bearer lower a coffin into an lay open grave. Everything is set up upon the diagonal except the six vertical draw as by a ropes disappearing into an open slot in the sod It seems as if the pall-bearers have gathered to place some strange key in its perforation or a letter in the mailbox. At his best, Woodman is a master of this sort of visual wit. He is particularly profitable with the extreme spatial contrasts of his outdoor pageants and the strong matrices and faculty of perception of enclosure to be base in his urban spaces.

In Wing Walking, a pageant of a daredevil riding the upper wing of a biplane, the globule from the wing of the plane to the rural fields below is fairly breathtaking, and all is accomplished within a not many inches of relief space. Turnstile is a beneficial example of one of Woodman's figure calmly negotiating the nearly surreal maze of the urban environment. While Katz has studiously cultivated a single elegantly damped-down phraseology Woodman seems more and more easy in mind to reach for whatever event he can bring to bear. The handling of the screw in Wing Walking. is top-flight illustrational work, effortlessly melding the depiction of motion, transparency and solidity.

Like Katz's work, Woodman, exists in an insulated atmosphere in which signs of real conflict, necessity or overt sexuality seldom appear. It is to his credit that he has set a way to tap the obvious thirst for lively representational work without relying upon sanctimonious political scolding or tedious deconstruction of media collection of lawss Nor, for that matter, does he fall into the smooth more familiar trap of academic classicism.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group