April 22, 2004
Stephanie Pryor at CRG Gallery
An Artforum.com review of the Stephanie Pryor exhibition at CRG Gallery. The link dies in two months, so here's the full text of the review:
Los Angeles–based artist Stephanie Pryor has reversed course for her second New York solo show, substituting about thirty diminutive, representational acrylic ink paintings on paper for the medium- to large-scale abstractions of her 2001 CRG debut. What unites the two bodies of work is Pryor's technique, which involves multiple watery layers of acrylic; here, the application, subsequent drying, and reapplication of ink washes have significantly wrinkled the paper. The texture gives the works an antiquated quality that reinforces Pryor's pleasantly fusty subject matter. Animal studies—a flock of birds taking flight, a wolf in the forest, and a lion eating its prey—and depictions of elaborately costumed performers on (or near) the stage are interspersed in a single row around the gallery. Several of the actors, isolated against a murky background, appear to be in the midst of private reveries despite their ostensibly public environment. Like Kai Althoff's lanky watercolor dandies, these works channel a quaintly appealing fin de siècle nostalgia.