DREW LOWENSTEIN: NEW PAINTINGS
Solomon Projects
1037 Monroe Drive
Atlanta GA 30306
404 875 7100
April 30 to June 12, 2004
By JERRY CULLUM
Drew Lowenstein Slow Swirl by the Edge of the Franchise 2004
acrylic on canvas,
78 x 76 inches
Courtesy the Artist
Drew Lowenstein's paintings incorporate all the doubts about painting's
validity into extraordinarily successful works of art. Working with unprimed
canvas, he achieves his delicate surface effects by allowing oil-based
pigment to soak through from the back, creating a field of pastel stains and
spatters to horrify any remaining devotees of old-master technique while
undermining a good many pretensions of color-field practice as well.
Lowenstein then marks the front of the canvas with a succession of small
strokes of charcoal that resemble, by turns, the flowing letters of Arabic,
the more angular ones of Hebrew, or the geometric precursors of both.
Gradually accumulating clusters of parallel marks, he produces designs that
recall, in fact, ancient traditions of drawings formed from the letters of
this or that sacred text, forming an oblique visual commentary on the ideas
expressed in the words of revelation.
The New York artist's concerns, though, are anything but sacred and
seldom entirely serious, and his apparent images are never quite revelatory.
"Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Franchise," a canvas poking fun at Mark
Rothko's surrealist work "Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea," seems to
depict disassembled auto parts. His images are rarely that resolvable,
however, and are simultaneously haunting and satiric; they almost recall
definable figures, from birds to buildings, but in the end they defeat
attempts at interpretation. The shapes stay elusive, teasing the
imagination, and the entire show at Solomon Projects could have been given
the title of one characteristic work, "Guide to the Persistence of
Perplexing Memories." Lowenstein has rendered the ironic skepticism of
contemporary consciousness with the haunting emotional intensity that
accompanies unconscious survivals, and the result is funny, oddly lovely,
and ultimately compelling.
