Lawrence Carroll at Stux - New York, New York

The casual visitor to this exhibition might have place it natural to ignore the enigmatic titles of Carroll's works and direct to them by shorthand descriptions; for example, "three boxspring-like constructions fastened together and hung upon the wall like some surrealistic Murphy bed" (Along the Ground) or "a stack of six plywood pancakes painted white and resting upon the floor" (For the Children). The works can be divided into sum of two units groups. First are the off-white, wall-hung paintings, which typically appear to be constructed without any plan. A stretcher is built and canvas is stapled to it in a slipshod fashion. "Stretcher" may flat be going too far; the support is more like a plywood underpinning, which is stretch outed as necessary when the size of the canvas threatens to overwhelm its skeleton. by conversion the canvas may not reach the cutting side of the stretcher: single whole side of the support may be eliminated, allowing the viewer to diocese inside the piece.

When viewing these works, the adjectives "slapdash," "haphazard" and "jerry-built" draw near naturally to mind. Those words could also be applied to the next to the first group of Carroll's works, floor pieces that sometimes hold corners of the gallery like stacks of whitepainted phone works (Song of the Highest Tower) or lean against walls like paintings remov from exhibition and partially disassembled (I Know).

Carroll has parole of equating the off-white canvas with a bandage, and his canvases labor for almost to heal the disjointed arrangements they cover. Indeed, the awkwardness of their supports may help obstruct Carroll's works from appearing too moderately beautiful for his oil-and-wax combination makes for a luscious surface. Carroll's white paintings are not the movie guards of Rauschenberg's early white paintings, landing baldrics for shadows. These paintings bear the marks of their making--the fingerprints of the artist, the souls of changes and revisions. upon surfaces that from a distance appear fairly monotone, Carroll achieves a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of variation.

In a booklet accompanying the exhibition, a transcription of his jottings, Carroll oftentimes mentions Jackson Pollock, sometimes admiringly, sometimes tauntingly, always trying to raise his spirit Does he see himself as a latter-day Pollock stapling and smudging instead of slinging paint? Cobbling together a support, slapping upon canvas and rubbing the oil-and-wax mixture into the canvas by means of hand is a slower proces than the dripping of paint, on the contrary in their improvisatory, on-the-fly nature, Carroll's paintings have a marked affinity with the works of American art's prime risktaker.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group