STEVEN ALEXANDER J O U R N A L: Scott Malbaurn

2.11.11

SCOTT MALBAURN at Kurnatowski

Scott Malbaurn, Tide, 2011, 72 x 72 inches (2 panels), acrylic on canvas

Scott Malbaurn is showing a group of new paintings at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery through November 13, 2011. Scott's previous work, while always clean, hard-edge and reductive, has often conveyed a certain restlessness in its configuration -- energized gestural lines or complex geometric diagrams. With this group of paintings, he has placed his primary focus on retinal resonances, the complexity and movement being manifested spatially through intense color interactions within a highly simplified iconic structure. Using the chevron as his motif, he has arrived at a configuration that allows him to manipulate the pictorial space through saturation and weight of color, creating undulating meditative rhythms with glowing off-key color transitions. The surfaces of these paintings are absolutely pristine, built of many layers of translucent polymer to form a seamless skin. Each painting embodies a distinct world of teeming plasticity.

Scott Malbaurn, Fenestra, 2011, 24 x 18 inches, acrylic on canvas

Scott Malbaurn, Terminus, 2011, 36 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas

Scott Malbaurn, Jive, 2011, 36 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas

18.8.10

Summer Love
at Janet Kurnatowski

Kazimira Rachfal, Untitled, 2008, 10 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

It's a bit after the fact, but among the many interesting summer group shows this season was a beautiful show called Summer Love, full of wonderful small-scale abstract paintings at Janet Kurnatowski in Brooklyn. This exhibition was another affirmation of the vitality of abstraction and sensuous painting in New York. Each work in the show was a handmade jewel, intimate in scale, expansive in scope. It was obvious that none of these artists were involved with notions of strategy, but rather that each was engaged in a personal poetic dialogue with the language and history of painting, and with the world.