Edward Shalala.
Conner, Jill
Brokebridge Gallery | Cleveland, Ohio
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Abstract expressionism's star has never really waned for
American painters, even though it has wandered into distant galaxies
over the intervening years. Many black holes have meanwhile pulsed into
being in the Ab-Ex universe, including those of Robert Ryman, Robert
Smithson and Michael Heizer, who combined investigations of different
media with time-based elements such as natural or artificial light, the
surface of the earth, and the optics of negative space. At Brokebridge
(through June 30, 2008), Edward Shalala continues on this same,
multidimensional course, underscoring painting's bottomless
appetite for star or navel gazing.
Mainly focusing on painting's alleged objecthood, Shalala
deploys an array of supports, often involving just a few threads of
canvas. Last May in Roosevelt Park on Manhattan's Lower East Side,
Shalala exhibited black-and-white photographs of trees and grassy fields
"painted" with tangled filaments. This untitled: canvas thread
in nature series spills over into his Brokebridge show, which featured
three of these Roosevelt Park photos, one taken in Martha's
Vineyard, and 20 raw canvas paintings with pulled threads. For instance,
a bundle of fibers burst from the center of untitled: bias (all work
2008), a 7-inch-square, single-fill canvas whose weave runs diagonally
rather than vertically.
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Abandoning the habitual square of paint, Shalala bleaches or washes
down the canvas to isolate colored nuances in the material itself,
eschewing the established play of presence and absence for one of subtle
modulation. More to the point, the empty spaces often found in cubist
paintings or even the end game works of 1950s gesturalists is the
show's constant leitmotiv. Taking a cue from performance art and
concrete poetry, works like untitled: canvas, threads removed also do
precisely what they describe. Here the ends always justify the means,
whether it involves collaborating with weavers and tailors,
"etching" outdoor scenes in unraveled lines, or just poking
around in the dust.
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Rauschenberg once said that his goal was to combine everything
possible in a painting. Shalala, however, tries to remove everything,
challenging the very process and purchase of painting. In 2005, he
filled a slender box with 600 feet of canvas thread, part of which was
pulled through a runnel of red paint, justifying its $30,000 price tag.
Appearances to the contrary, his strategy appears to be paying off.
Recently featured in the 183rd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art at
the National Academy and P.S.1's group show "Minus
Space," Shalala has a summer solo show at New York's Painting
Center and more canvas thread and dust pieces at M'Finda Kalunga
Community Garden. Along with these, he will show photographs of them
printed at Kinko's.
