Place and Passage: Elisa Jensen & Ruth Miller is a diptych of twinned solo spots for two beloved instructors at the New York Studio School, the younger of whom, Jensen, had studied there with Miller in the late 1980s. While Miller hones an acute metaphysical eye upon rural themes in still life assemblages and orchards spied through her Connecticut cottage windows, Jensen, in contrasts of size, scale and focus alike, opts for a nonetheless comparable rapprochement of the timeless and the transient. Her expansive, latter-day Ash Can canvases capture the hipster bicycling invaders of her Greenpoint locale with observational acumen that belies abstracting texture and compositional all-overness. The sense of loss and decay signaled by a “ghost bike” or mindless yet artful tags of graffiti is offset by the sartorial sharpness and youthful vigor of the beautiful young bodies in this urban bacchanal. Pairing individuated types against rough-hewn gritty grounds – as in “Under the BQE” (2013/14), starring a lush-thighed vertical cousin of Poussin’s Louvre Narcissus – constitutes a quasi-mythic social realism that manages to channel both the tenderness of Isabel Bishop and the brutalism of Leon Golub. Like Miller, she is much taken by oppositions of rough and smooth. DAVID COHEN Through April 5, 8 West 8th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212 673 6466. Elisa Jensen, “Under the BQE,” (2013/14). Oil on linen, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the Artist - See more at: artcritical/#sthash.qD9PdGUJ.dpuf
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 17:52:17 +0000
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