just say yeah...

"LSD has colonized part of my brain" admitted Tomaselli. Uh, indeed. A veritable satiation of visual stimuli, these paintings gargle with color. Over a black background, you've got the kaleidescopic mandelas, the birds made up of photo-collaged eyeballs and flowers (Archimboldo of a different feather), the signature ropes of pills. Dried fig leaves (they're huge! enough to cover even a Mapplethorpe model) punctuate "Migrant Fruit Thugs". - Ooh, he's good with titles. "Hang Over" boasts the Mardi Gras profusion of the aformentioned strands of pills -- substitute pearls and think Maharajah -- draped from tree branches. 'Scuse me while I have an acid flashback. There are also garlands of hands, Rolaids, flowers. On the ground, a meadow of grass, petit blooms, and weeds--some painted, some pressed. This 2-panel piece is gigantic; the elements ensconced in layers of resin about 3/4 inch thick. So 3-D, so trippy: flora & fauna & Jimi & Syd.

It's odd to see all these disembodied heads, spotlit, spiked at the neck and pedestalled. Few heads have noses, some are devoid of mouths. The destruction is grotesque. There are, however, a handful of intact beauties. (Hey, the Met can't put a wreck on the cover of a booklet, can they?) "Face of a Youth" (cat. 23) is lovely, with a delicate mouth and a look of consternation. By the hair, I think he's a monk (I sure can pick 'em.) Conversely, a 15c. ceiling boss (cat.45) has a face with distorted eyes, pug nose, and lips drawn back to reveal machicolated teeth. The oak has aged to the texture of lizard skin. Monsters are eternal. A few more things I really loved-- "Head of a Grotesque"-- this creature's lower jaw sports a monotooth, the viewer stares directly up its rodent snout. "Prudence and the Ages of Man" is a 3-headed bust: youth, middle years, old age. Some wake-up call. Accuracy in facial depiction had come to be crucial in the Middle Ages, it was the mark of the sculptor. But since it was mostly saints and kings, they got a double dose of destruction between ther English Civil War and the French Revolution. (History repeats itself vis a vis Bamiyan and the threats from Iran/q.)
p.s. On my way out, I wa hopelessly distracted by a rock crystal ewer on an enamel base dosed with diamonds. In the vitrines were cooingly beautiful pendants. I favor the one in the "form of a gondola with a youth," he's playing a lyre and riding an elephant. As default, the one in the "form of a mermaid." Both drip pearls. On one wall, a 17c. oil by Jan Steen: "The Dissolute Household." The eye is drawn to a pair of spectacular (displayed and depicted) globes. Diane Brill, eat your heart out. This is all in the tiny Gold Room, part of the Linsky Galleries.

Here are my notes from the Matthew Ritchie show:
bombast of boom
apocalyptic, sort-ofscience fiction equations (one painting uses these textually in theimage)lenticular painting 42" across (actually a c-print onDuratrans mounted on lenticular panels), how suitable for the concept, because seemingly the adversary shifts/ is altered, but is constant [see "1984"]
paintings are a little obvious, w/ battleships &explosions, palette rust- brown, fire orange & yellow.

ashes to ashes
dust to dust
die you may
but bleed you must

the universal adversary is, of course, despair.
This is a gallery-wide instalation and will take some minutes to be absorbed.


Fred Tomaselli at James Cohan Gallery
533 W. 26 st.
212-714-9500
through Nov. 11

Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, at the Met
212-535-7710
through Feb. 19

Matthew Ritchie "The Universal Aversary" at Andrea Rosen
525 W. 24 st.
212-627-6000
through Oct. 28