December 5, 2004
Daniel Lefcourt and Lisa Sigal in New York
Artforum.com has posted my brief reviews of new exhibitions by Daniel Lefcourt and Lisa Sigal. Both will soon be archived on BrianSholis.com. In the meantime, here are the texts:
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.
In her second solo at this gallery, Lisa Sigal trades in her site-responsive archi-sculptural vocabulary—which has stood out this year in group shows at Artists' Space, White Columns, and Clementine Gallery—for a more painterly idiom that focuses on the internal relationships of each construction. It's tough to call this a conservative move, because her works—made of wooden panels, vellum, sheet rock, masonite, joint compound, cardboard, and other materials, juxtaposed and partially painted over—still explode the traditional frame of painting. (Her forays into gouaches and small works on canvas are competent but not nearly as strong as the larger pieces.) Here, the works are nailed to and propped up against the walls, and the largely abstract fields of solid color, sometimes crossing multiple objects in the bricolage, highlight her material juxtapositions. This show is drawn from life, so to speak, and the acuity of Sigal's construction-site aesthetic translates the complexities of observed places (with their accidental beauty) into static objects whose intricacies are consistently rewarding.