Xylor Jane
11 Oct - 05 Nov 2006
XYLOR JANE
Dying Everyday
October 11 - November 5, 2006
Opening Reception Saturday, October 14, 7-9 PM
55 Chrystie Street, near Hester, Lower East Side
Through Sunday
Xylor Jane has moved from making enormous visionary drawings to working on square panels less than four feet on a side, where she seems to be formulating a highly intuitive variation on what was called serial painting in the 1970s. In all the paintings a grid of some sort is present, and each brushstroke, large or small is a round-topped shape - a single dab of paintbrush that also suggest a fingernail or a tombstone.
The best are monochromes reminiscent of Agnes Martin grid paintings but with active, sometimes halucinatory, spatial twists. This is especially the case in the vortical plunge, in black and dark violet, of "So Long," and the lateral slide of "Untitled/3,333," where a field of white strokes bordered in black, hints at a colored rainbow.
Less interesting are "End Times" and "Dying Everyday 1963 - 2044," which use seven bright colors to create moire patterns that bring to mind Jennifer Bartlett's dot paintings of the early '70s (although the graduated darkness overtaking the edges of "End Times" is intriguing, as is thinking about how Ms. Jane managed to achieve it, dab by dab).
As with the disparate works of Alfred Jensen, On Kawara and Danica Phelps, these efforts mark time in a highly personal, coded manner. But the obsession that drives them comes across just fine, throwing distinictive roadblocks innto the path of the inevitable.
Roberta Smith
Dying Everyday
October 11 - November 5, 2006
Opening Reception Saturday, October 14, 7-9 PM
55 Chrystie Street, near Hester, Lower East Side
Through Sunday
Xylor Jane has moved from making enormous visionary drawings to working on square panels less than four feet on a side, where she seems to be formulating a highly intuitive variation on what was called serial painting in the 1970s. In all the paintings a grid of some sort is present, and each brushstroke, large or small is a round-topped shape - a single dab of paintbrush that also suggest a fingernail or a tombstone.
The best are monochromes reminiscent of Agnes Martin grid paintings but with active, sometimes halucinatory, spatial twists. This is especially the case in the vortical plunge, in black and dark violet, of "So Long," and the lateral slide of "Untitled/3,333," where a field of white strokes bordered in black, hints at a colored rainbow.
Less interesting are "End Times" and "Dying Everyday 1963 - 2044," which use seven bright colors to create moire patterns that bring to mind Jennifer Bartlett's dot paintings of the early '70s (although the graduated darkness overtaking the edges of "End Times" is intriguing, as is thinking about how Ms. Jane managed to achieve it, dab by dab).
As with the disparate works of Alfred Jensen, On Kawara and Danica Phelps, these efforts mark time in a highly personal, coded manner. But the obsession that drives them comes across just fine, throwing distinictive roadblocks innto the path of the inevitable.
Roberta Smith