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George Dunbar at Galerie Simonne Sterne

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Lilly Wei

Veteran New Orleans-based abstractionist George Dunbar's latest works continue to mine his particular brand of formalism, in this instance, an intriguingly disparate combination of the minimal and the baroque. In addition, they might also be seen as a hybrid of painting and bas-relief, so emphatic are their materiality and objectness, their presence as things in the world. The works here represent a generous selection from his handsome, deftly crafted "Minimal" series (2000-01), ranging in size from the imposing to the domestic. For their impeccably wrought monochromatic fields, colored clay is used as paint. Deep rich reds, blacks, greens, browns, purples and lustrous whites leafed in palladium, gold or silver have been sandblasted to a glow that flares up and dims, depending upon the available light and the viewer's point of view. The surfaces, smooth as silk, lambent and matte, distressed and crackled, are worked much as a planter works the soil: modeled, furrowed, tamped, the physicality and sensuality of the materials fully exploited. While more reductive than their predecessors, they are still opulent, unabashed luxury items that revel in their own richness.

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This recent exhibition might be divided into two parts. The first included works such as Minimal Series #2 and Minimal Series #3 (both 2001), which have flat metallic bands, themselves incised with narrow lines, suspended in the upper part of the plane like a fragment of a simple entablature. These bands are framed by an allover layer of another color that is irregularly edged, the color beneath visible, the whole vaguely reminiscent of Rothko's floating islands of color. The second category was made up of works that feature an emblazoned, ruched-and-crumpled, friezelike stripe, such as Minimal Series #10 and Minimal Series #14 (both 2001). This group, recalling Dunbar's much earlier "Rag" series, paraphrases Newman's legendary zip turned sideways and made three-dimensional.

Dunbar began to use metal leaf in the 1960s, inspired by the elaborately gilded facades and altarpieces of Mexican cathedrals, and has used it ever since, applied flat or over raised bundles of clay and often treated so that the color of the clay breaks through the thin-skinned leafing. In this authoritative body of new work, which contains elements of everything he has ever made, Dunbar cleaves to the premise that has served him well for so long--fastidious construction coupled with beauty of materials--and fashioned out of it a poised and elegant art, the subject and raison d'etre of which is still itself.

George Dunbar at Galerie Simonne Sterne

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Lilly Wei

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