David Storey
CUE Art Foundation
511 West 25th Street, Ground Floor
New York, New York 10001
212-206-3583
January 29 - March 6, 2004
By ERIC
GELBER
David Storey Kentaurennamen
2004
oil on canvas, 104 x 68 inches
courtesy CUE Art Foundation
David Storey is one of the few formalist painters I can think of who
hasn't replaced inventiveness with monotony. Any painter who invents
forms might inevitably fall prey to illusionism, but not so Storey.
Although recognizable shapes appear in a few of these paintings (horses,
owls, arrows), he builds his imaginary worlds using a private idiom.
Storey has lovingly and obsessively recycled his private signs and symbols
through the years. The individual components of these busy but clearly
delineated compositions remind us of many things, but at the same time
they are autonomous.
The experience of
looking at these paintings is the opposite of cloud gazing, where you
find yourself searching for one referent after another. The commonly-heard
criticisms of abstract art-that it fetishizes and distorts the human
figure, transforms everything into a phallic symbol, is onanistic and
subjective, hides the artist's lack of technical skills-don't apply
to this work. Storey is so concerned with formal qualities his imaginary
shapes look the way they do because of their relationship to other parts
of the composition. But at the same time they are not cut off from the
external world or the history of art. This is what makes his work enigmatic.
These paintings
are flat. The tightly interlocking planes of bright color suggest psychological
states instead of specific physical spaces but first and foremost they
serve the overall design. Storey incorporates a number of subtleties
into each canvas. Dripped paint, loose brushwork, and evidence of previous
states of the painting appear amidst flat areas of color, but are made
prominent by their scarcity. Painted black lines outline most of the
shapes in these paintings, but some of the painted lines are done with
colors we find in other areas of the painting. This makes the pictorial
space more complicated than it would be if Storey simply painted black
lines in front of colors that suggested deep space. Also, the black
lines outline areas of color, but some colored shapes have no outline
at all, and most of the time the colors are not enclosed by the lines
and spread beyond them. The patchwork of bright intense colors and the
linear structures interact but have a separate existence. The variety
of marks simulates textural variation.
"The Age of
Brass," (2003), is a perfect example of what Storey can do with
the oval and the square. This busy painting is a mosaic of sorts. Storey,
not unlike Picabia in his imaginary machine paintings, makes the viewer
feel comfortable in a world of rather anonymous shapes. However, Storey's
paintings are machines that produce what Clement Greenberg called "plastic
sight." There is something brave and incorrigible about Storey's
reuse of shapes, the circle within circle, the lozenge, rectangles,
elongated boomerang shapes, Miróesque mustachios, and squiggles.
Stuart Davis reused shapes and never failed to be inventive. His brightly
colored squiggles activated the whole frame, and even when Davis introduced
recognizable shapes into the mix, fire hydrants, figures, architecture,
his canvases always maintained a militant flatness and a strong sense
of movement and design. Storey is interested in what Greenberg called
the "decorative and narrative complications of line." The
horses that appear in "Sol Invictus," (2002), are as mechanical
and iconic as the figures that appear in Davis' work. However, Storey's
work depends very little on observation of the exterior world.
David Storey Adorama
2003
oil on canvas, 65 x 156 inches
courtesy CUE Art Foundation
In "Adorama,"
(2003), a masterpiece in my opinion, Storey divides the canvas between
cool blues, browns and greens and hot oranges and reds. Then he puts
flashes of hot yellow and orange in the cool half and blue and green
shapes in the hot half. The interplay between hot and cool colors and
the dividing and subdividing of pictorial space energizes these canvases.
Storey's obscurity does not frustrate the viewer because of the satisfying
formal qualities of the work. His compositions are precarious balancing
acts. The placement of color and line is dependent upon the artist's
intuitive sense of balance. These canvases have been worked on for a
long time and the clarity of the imagery is a product of this slow moving
contemplative process.
"The Silver
Spear," (2003), "Venus & Mars," (1990), and "Kentaurennamen,"
(2004), contain masculine and feminine personas. Storey's pictorial
structures evoke different subjects, but the inventive treatment of
form is paramount. His paintings are constructed worlds that have their
own independent existence. The outside world is recreated in a completely
new form. Storey's slow, unhurried and steady brushstrokes create an
interesting tension between control and expression. He shows us that
painters can pursue their formalist interests and not sacrifice invention
and the imagination.
