Downes paintings reflect a unique combination of aggressive conception and passive elaboration. Fervent perceptions of space enliven their broad outlines; details follow, filling in the story of each site exactly “as is.” Colors add atmosphere and light.

Cheim & Read 547 West 25th Street New York City 212 242 7727 September 20 to November 3, 2007 In Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s “Triumph of Death” (circa 1562), hordes of skeletons swarm upon a town, pitilessly inflicting lessons about the transitoriness of life and its diversions. Popular depictions of death have evolved in the…

Zwirner & Wirth 32 East 69 Street New York City 212 517 8677 June 27 to August 31 Zwirner & Wirth’s “Old School” explores a tantalizing mega-generational gap: the divide between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings and our postmodernist counterparts. Nearly thirty landscapes, still lifes and figure paintings by old masters and contemporary artists make for…

A review of his 2006 show at Acquavella Galleries

Susan Shatter: New Paintings DFN Gallery 210 Eleventh Avenue New York City 212-334-3400 Stuart Shils: Works on Paper Davis & Langdale Company, Inc. 231 East 60th Street New York City 212-838-0333 No other medium has watercolor’s blend of luminosity and directness, and none requires so sure and responsive a touch. With larger watercolors, it becomes…

Bowery Gallery 530 West 25th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues 646-230-6655 Until October 1, 2005 It’s no cliché—painting really is, and always has been, an act of inquiry. But art in New York City has become a competitive vocation, so driven by eye-catching effects and rib-nudging ideas, that it can be difficult to separate…

New York Studio School 8 West 8 Street New York NY 10011 212 673 6466 March 30 to May 13, 2006 The achievement of the American artist Sandra Fisher  (1947–94) was overshadowed during her lifetime by her husband R.B. Kitaj and other School of London artists. Now, 12 years after Fisher’s  death from a cerebral hemorrhage,…

Howard Scott Gallery 529 West 20th Street 646-486-7004 February – March 11, 2006 According to light theory, white is the sum of all colors. As a spiritual symbol, white occupies one end of another kind of spectrum; it’s the note of purity beyond life’s assortment of grays. For artists, though, white has a more down-to-earth…

GREGORY GILLESPIE Forum Gallery CHAIM GROSS: REINVENTING FORM Forum Gallery WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: THE MAGIC FLUTE, DRAWINGS AND PROJECTIONS Marian Goodman Gallery Not many contemporary artists came as close as Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000) to the virtuosic rendering of early Renaissance painting, and none took these talents in so unsettling a direction. The thirty-odd paintings at Forum…

George Nick: Recent Paintings Tibor de Nagy Gallery 724 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 212-262-5050 November 16 to December 23 George Nick: An Artist’s Conscience New York Studio School (8 West 8th Street, New York, NY 212-673-6466 October 27 to December 10, 2005 Underneath the luscious surfaces of George Nick’s paintings lurks a contradiction. His…