Robert
Sussman
CUE Art Foundation
511 West 25th Street, Ground Floor
New York, New York 10001
Tel: 212-206-3583
By BENJAMIN
LA ROCCO
Robert Sussman,
caption details to follow
Robert Sussman's
show at Cue Art Foundation breathes the same Chelsea air as that of
his esteemed predecessor Willem de Kooning at Gagosian. I visited the
latter just before the former. Unfair perhaps, comparing the two seems
nonetheless profitable; viewing Sussman next to De Kooning allows one
to see more clearly the contemporary twists in Sussman's content. The
comparison is also fitting because Sussman cites the Abstract Expressionists
as his primary influence claiming, like those artists, to "favor
experience over conceptualization." This chunk of the artist's
statement, surely apt as far as the abstract expressionists are concerned
seems less well suited to Sussman's paintings.
Sussman, like his
exhibition's curator, Thomas Nozkowski, favors small paintings. This
small scale lends itself to a more retiring contemplation of the art
than the Abstract Expressionists tended to provide. Prompted by the
artist's focus on certain forms, I find myself viewing his paintings
as one might a puzzle, dissecting them for intersecting meanings. The
calligraphic curly-cue, reminiscent of cartooning, repeats itself throughout
the paintings on display at Cue, as does Sussman's use of rectilinear
constructs of solids and voids. He plays washy trapezoids against hazy
yet colorful grounds. He has a tendency to centralize his compositions
like icons while his employ of the diptych consistently emphasizes horizontality.
The paintings seem schematized at times. Take, for example, untitled
#2, in which the right hand panel is a stark black that severs the landscape-like
composition on the left. Such a black in such a context does not seem
experiential. It seems instead to derive from some concept of experience
as interrupted or fragmented. Much of Sussman's color functions as does
this black.
De Kooning always
uses naturalistic color grounded in sensory experience no matter how
intense the hue. His paintings from the 60's and 70's are relentlessly
atmospheric - color speaks always of observed phenomena. Brushstrokes
swim outward, suggesting space far beyond that contained by the picture
plane. These paintings do not repeat form with the exception of the
brushstroke itself, the lowest common denominator of content in de Kooning's
work.
Sussman might find a more apt lineage in other abstract expressionists,
such as Barnett Newman or Clyfford Still, whose insistence on certain
compositional devices mirrors more closely his own. Yet both of these
artists use scale to force viewers into awareness of themselves bodily
in relationship to the paintings. To look at their larger paintings,
one must literally pace the length of the room, close to see the surface,
far to contemplate the whole. You're meant to lose yourself in the abstract
expressionist's colors, to have an experience of your own. Before a
Sussman, one stands at several paces, physically tranquil. It's the
mind and the eye that do the work. Sussman's easy, inventive way with
paint appears driven by a far more cerebral core than the artist is
willing to admit. Rather than favoring experience over concept, Sussman's
lush and intellectual paintings reveal the pitfall's of such dichotomies.
