James Rosenquist at Gagosian - New York - Brief Article

With their sci-fi titles, cinematic scale and dizzying optical effects, James Rosenquist's new paintings seemed an apt precursor to the summer blockbuster movie season. According to the gallery press release, these works are inspired by Einstein's theory of relativity, and, indeed, they come about as close to expressing a sense of speed and motion as a two-dimensional composition could be expected to do. Crisp reflective ribbons coil in and out of tangles of brightly colored streamers. Space recedes and advances unpredictably, and brushstrokes vary from hardedged to blurry, suggesting the distortions created by the camera's eye (Rosenquist worked from photographs of materials he assembled).

Rosenquist's current esthetic is somewhere between Frank Stella-style baroque and the light-show sequence from the movie 2001. Pop-culture references, and in fact just about any hint of recognizable imagery, are long gone, but Rosenquist's devotion to visual complexity and spectacle remain. The largest work, The Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light, is 46 feet long and brings to mind Rosenquist's earlier panoramic murals. There are three major focal points in this work. On the right is a metallic cone, at once suggestive of an armored nipple and a missile tip. It points toward a central vortex filled with swirling skeins of pink and red. On the left a silvery ribbon shoots out in a straight line toward the edge of the canvas.

Rosenquist's favorite motifs in his Pop-art days were girls and cars. Here these subjects seem to have been sublimated and transformed into a play of hard-edged metallic forms against softer, flesh-toned brushstrokes. The brittle sexuality of the earlier works is absent, but visual temptation and overt eroticism remain in the riot of vibrant colors, visceral strokes and pulsing space.

The smaller works in the show employ similar motifs and optical devices, though they are, by necessity, not as all-enveloping as Stowaway. Nevertheless, they suggest that Rosenquist continues to be unwilling to rest on his laurels. While many other artists of his generation mine ever-diminishing returns from the signature works which made them famous, Rosenquist keeps pushing his limits. In the process he puts new spins on America's unquenchable obsession with size, speed and seduction.

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