Going Exploring on Three Different Trails

December 12, 1999

PHYLLIS BRAFF

‘The Grid’

Nese Alpan Gallery, 1499 Old Northern Boulevard, Roslyn. To Saturday. (516) 484-7238.

All six artists in this small but rewarding show pursue the grid format as part of a 1990’s search for urgency, rather than a continuation of Minimalist concerns. As might be expected, there is ample evidence of modules, systems, rhythms and patterns, but there is also much use of unpredictable pushing, morphing, fading and other types of restless movement that generates optical energy.

A sense of loose, dripping pigment makes Nancy Olivier’s ”Interior Motive” the show’s most overtly assertive work. Shifting luminosity triggers the constant surface action in Susan Kornblum’s heavily textured pale works and in Kristen Mara Brown’s beeswax assemblages.

Regularized drilled perforations both create and pierce the schematics in Keith Gamache’s wood surfaces, making the process part of the subject and introducing an important conceptual dimension to the exhibition. Duncan Johnson also imposes an order using wood in his wall piece, ”Step,” a work that relies on the unpredictability of grain and tone for its lively presence.

Grids can trigger sensual vibrations, as demonstrated in several handsome paintings by Hester Simpson. The broad expanses of tightly detailed linear designs over a mottled color field have a meditative quality. When these mesmerizing rhythms suddenly alter slightly, the break has the forceful impact of a ritual being challenged.

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