2004-11 Lefcourt, Daniel Artforum.com Review 200 words
This exhibition is a study in sameness and difference. Zoom in on the seven paintings and you'll find all-black abstractions whose narrow rivulets of paint playfully catch light, as if Jason Martin's sine-waves had been scattered in every direction; zoom out and you're faced with more or less undifferentiated portraits of rocks, set adrift on large expanses of unprimed linen and available in two sizes (large and small). One can envision Lefcourt in the studio, making one after another as if in a meditative trance—an impression that's echoed by a sly allusion to scholar's rocks: His titles—such as The Banality of Evil, The Pain of Others, and Variable Value (all works 2004)—allude to texts by authors from Arendt to Sontag, or possess a more generalized intellectual portent. In the back room, a small monitor plays a looped stop-motion animation of rocks, this time painted gold, passing by in an unending procession. The catch? Paradoxically—and unlike the paintings, which are editions of a sort—the video is unique. The conceit is meant to add conceptual gravitas to what are, after all, paintings of rocks. But the canvases, seductive but not really “pretty,” hold their own (and the viewer's attention) just fine.


Daniel Lefcourt
Hard Victory
2004
oil on linen
72 x 96 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Taxter & Spengemann, New York