Diane Brawarsky at Katharina Rich Perlow - Brief Article

Art in America, Oct, 2001 by Gerrit Henry

Diane Brawarsky's mixed-medium "collage paintings" take as their subject a currently popular mode: the nature of mark-making in the artistic process, an inquiry that might conceivably take us from the present all the way back to the Lascaux caves.

Brawarsky concentrates on women--small ideographic representations of same in cloth---or on paper-on-copper-wire dresses or jerseys or sweaters, all snapping to loose attention across serialized horizontal and vertical rows. At first, the work may vex: how many of such Lilliputian lovelies, all abstract and miniaturely anonymous, does one care to behold?

In a work like Women with Voices, 20-odd of these little women are presented in the form of small interlocking rectangles and squares that might or might not be all-purpose apparel for the well-dressed geometric shape. A whited-out rectangle in a corner and a black rectangle and a red rectangle in similar rectangular settings around the ground add grace notes to all the formality. Brawarsky's maximalism finally loses its punch in excesses of painterly verbiage.

The tighter she gets, though, the more comical. Storied Ones combines Albers, a Scrabble board and a patchwork quilt, to wonderfully childlike effect. Letting Her Go, Watching Her Fly seems to be about mother-daughter relationships, with several white-grounded dresses "escaping" the presence--perhaps even the influence--of a single figure to the left. Brawarsky performs some escape acts of her own, sidestepping representation and meaningfulness at every turn, whether by Abstract-Expressionist paint-handling, the insertion of random numbers and images among the squares, or just allover chaos. Sometimes we know well enough where we are by the humor. In Embraced or Encased, several little women's "uniforms"--a bathing suit, a maid's outfit--comically question the necessity of dressing up to play the part.

Often, though, Brawarsky's art is more problematic, ever walking the line between piquant social satire and a comparatively witless social distemper. At her best, she's affectingly funny; at her worst, she's alienatingly self-conscious. Still, there are reasons for her to be proud. More Stories--with its handsome, edge-to-edge polarities and paler-than-Pop colors--strikes an endearing balance between the witty and the obvious, making a new language of personal mark-making that's as challenging to read as it is rewarding to observe.