PAT LIPSKY
Elizabeth Harris Gallery
529 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
March 13 to April 12, 2003
Tues.-Sat. 11- 6PM
L.I.C.K.LTD Fine Art
46-44 11th Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
March 21 to April 17, 2003
Wed.-Sun. 12-6PM
By DONALD
LINDEMAN
Pat Lipsky Blue
Border 2002
Kremer and Guerra pigments and oil on canvas, 70½ x 68¾
inches
this and all images, Courtesy Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York
front page: True Lad 2002 Kremer and Guerra pigments and oil
on canvas, 60 x 72 inches
Pat Lipsky's two current New York exhibitions remind us that the art
of painting is invariably about itself before it is about anything else,
about its own making, and its own cultures. Lipsky's basic strategy
appears, at first glance, to be remarkably simple: vertically aligned
bands of color (she works in oil pigments) are broken mid-way through
the canvas and are met by another band of contrasting or similar color.
This compositional structure is further contextualized by subtle framing
devices: these include outlines that read as colored rivulets between
the dominating color bands, and, more often than not, an outer edge
which surrounds the entire painting, exposing yet more outlining and
then the raw canvas itself. Once she has set up this basic rhetorical
structure, Lipsky proceeds to explore any number of compositional and
color issues. Adherence to this particular scheme provides a clue to
Lipsky's artistic enterprise: she is as much concerned with the potentialities
of painting, and the opportunity to expose those possibilities, as she
is with any signature style. That there is something almost stubbornly
procedural about her art is readily apparent: I'm actually reminded
of Francis Bacon, who once described the process of painting as a battle
between the artist and the inevitability of the medium itself. The happy
revelation of these new shows is that Lipsky has uncovered the vocabulary
in which her attitude toward art making can find free reign.
Lipsky's recent paintings have much to say about the cultural contexts
of color abstraction. In terms of their scale and physical presence
they are certainly situated in the traditions of New York color field
painting, yet in their process-based exploration color and composition
they establish a dialogue with earlier strains of modern painting, recalling
Mondrian, and the purists of Paris (we might observe here that Ellsworth
Kelly has taken these same sources in an entirely different direction).
That this dialogue with the history of abstract art can be found in
her works helps explain the complexities that enter our viewing experience
once the strategies of her compositional arrangements have been assimilated.
The painting Blue Border (at Elizabeth Harris) typifies the various
strains of this conversation. Blue Border has all the object presence
of a flag painting by Jasper Johns, yet it immediately reminds us of
the rigorous, almost "objective" attitude toward color and
surface to be found in early modern abstraction. As such, Blue Border
functions as the hinge for Lipsky's paintings in both shows, announcing
her commitment to both variation and difficulty. In its scrupulous deployment
of blues, reds, and whites, Blue Border is a virtuoso display of painterly
discipline, and it is the most insistent and formal work to be found
in either show. Blue Border prepares the viewer for the range of themes
that Lipsky explores in her investigations of composition, pictorial
space, surface effect and palette.
Pat Lipsky Syncopated
Black 2002
Kremer and Guerra pigments and oil on canvas
61 x 73½ inches
In the paintings Black Covert
and Syncopated Black (at Elizabeth Harris) Lipsky sets up a beguiling
array of blacks, pale pinks, lavenders and greens. The regular march
of black bands across these canvases heighten the luminescent delicacy
of the paler colors, and, for this reviewer, conjured associations of
Chinatown at dusk. More typically purist in their incremental discourse
about composition and color are Jump In (at Elizabeth Harris) and True
Lad (at L.I.C.K.LTD). Jump In takes the balancing act of bold yet discrete
blues, reds and whites about as far as it can go, and it comes off handsomely.
In True Lad Lipsky takes a similar palette in an entirely different
direction: calibrating an arrangement of whites (and their various overtones)
with red and blues, the space of the painting opens up, reminding us
(not without a touch of sly humor) of her versatile knowledge of the
ways of picture making, and her ability to throw us off balance just
when we might have figured we were on solid ground. In Blue Grey Not
Touching (at Elizabeth Harris) Lipsky arranges a far closer group of
color values, and, in this variant approach, the imagery takes on another
quality altogether, conjuring the effect of subtle colors levitating
before our eyes. Lastly, there are the group of paintings, including
Blues, and Red Isn't Blue (at Elizabeth Harris), and Chartres II (at
L.I.C.K.LTD), which I think of as nocturnes. In these canvases Lipsky
lets down her guard a bit, exploring an internalized realm of colors
juxtaposed with blacks. While we may miss in this group the obvious
struggle we find in her more meditated and risk-taking color essays,
they open up yet another approach to the possibilities of space and
light.
In these two shows, Pat Lipsky demonstrates not only that New York color
abstraction is alive and well, but that it is still possible to pursue
a challenging individual vision for painting while making art that is
fresh and of the moment.
