Antonio Murado, El Carmen, 2009, 48 x 32 inches, oil on linenThe more intimate space of Von Lintel's new 23rd Street gallery is a perfect setting for a group of new paintings by the Spanish painter, Antonio Murado -- through January 16. Unlike much of Murado's previous work, large two-color wall-like paintings with distressed and crazes surfaces, these new works are not only smaller in scale, but more lyrical, almost narrative. Large layered and scraped shapes are set off by groups of colored spots that read as roses, sometimes in clusters and sometimes dispersed around the edges of the composition. As always, Murado's surfaces are beautiful -- in these works, they are oozey and fluid, sometimes thick and sometimes scraped down to the linen. There is a pervasive sense of nostalgia in this show, as the layered and fragmented images float and disperse like memories, laced with the melancholy of passing time.
