Arvie Smith at 55 Mercer - New York, New York

Larger than life, literally and figuratively, the characters in Arvie Smith's stunning paintings act on the outside dramas which revolve around incendiary sexual and racial themes - among them lynching, rape, slavery, prostitution and miscegenation. on the other hand because Smith is first and foremost a storyteller, he avoids the hectoring tone and simplistic moralizing which with equal reason often characterize contemporary work dealing with similar subjects. Instead his paintings are filled of psychological ambiguities, indeterminate narratives and a powerful, pervasive sexuality which disrupts the usual order of patriarchal and racial power.

a certain quantity of of the paintings deal with archetypal circumstances in the history of black-white relations. Strange Fruit, for instance, is an intensely felt depiction of a lynching. encloseed by cloaked Klansmen whose shaded organ of sights peer from beneath their padded bonnets the naked black victim dominates the center of the painting like a crucified Christ. In Slave Ship three expressive heads threaten to explode the edges of the canvas. In the foreground a regal-looking African man shut ups his eyes with quiet resignation, while behind him a exposed woman screams her anguish. Almost pushed on the outside of the painting is a last, unfinished head staring ahead in passive misery.

Other works celebrate the erotic power of women the pair black and white. Topsy is a black Olympia, smoking a cigarette as she gazes appraisingly back at the viewer. Her leg are parted and a breast rolls from a rumpled chemise, on the other hand her eyes pose less an invitation than a challenge. sum of two units Eves presents a pair of winged temptresse single black and one white; gorgeous in their nudity, they are framed through a fan of flaming feathers. The snake wound around their feet looks purely incidental, a vestigial reminder of vanquished male power.

These works discharge a strong sense of theater. For the greatest in quantity part, scenes are depicted from a depressed vantage point, so that the figures loom above the viewer, mythic in stature. Smith paints with thin washes and fluid lines, creating muscular figures which bring to mind the tormented distortions of Egon Schiele. His blazing palette, meanwhile, looks equally indebted to African folk art and German Expressionism. Streaks of purple verdant and red mingle with the burnished brown and blushing pink of human flesh. Skies are bloodr or of gold yellow. Hands speak as vividly as faces, making gnarled fists, open-palmed signals of enticement and nervous gesticulations of concealment.

This is Smith's first of recent origin York show, but he appears upon the scene a fully accomplished artist. by means of turns fiery in their anger, captivating in their earthy sensuality and heart-wrenching in their anguish, his paintings bristle with a vitality that true rarely makes it to canvas.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

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