Barnes and Reisman at Gross McCleaf

This is one of those pairings whose artists seem on first glance not to have much in common.

Victoria Barnes's works are small, playful oils that could almost be illustrations for a book of fables. Toys, animals— less common ones like turtles and minks— and the occasional child make oddly unsettling images. Flower Pitcher, a still life, is about the most traditional piece in the show.

More typical is Barnes's painting depicting an apple placed on a sheet of paper with the word "mama" printed on it. Mama, in turn, becomes the title of the work.

I've been reviewing Celia Reisman's work for more than a decade, and I've come to appreciate and expect the slightly off-kilter quality that she brings to her outwardly plain images of suburbia. Her work is like the landscapes of Paul Cézanne: It's equally geometric in design, but with a dreaminess totally foreign to the Frenchman's sun-baked green-and-ocher visions of Provence.

It's not just that Reisman employs more of a candy-store palette of colors; there's also a certain softness, a sense of relaxation that pervades her work.

Reisman's world exists in that perpetual state of suspended animation between dream and waking. I suspect that her latest show is named "A Certain Slant" in honor of the anthology favorite by Emily Dickinson. In writing of that "certain slant of light," Dickinson notes that, "When it comes the landscape listens— / Shadows—hold their breath." This seems to be the effect that Reisman seeks.

Certainly her Lovebirds Night is an image of life dreamed rather than lived. Even her smaller pieces, like Red Flame and Table and Chairs exist in the stillest air this side of Giorgio de Chirico.

But Pear, depicting a pear set atop a flat stone against a panoramic backdrop of fields, seems to be a bit of a departure for the artist. We'll have to see in what direction her next show takes her.♦


To read a response, click here.