Rachel Howard at the Bohen Foundation

The English painter Rachel Howard's first American exhibition, "Guilty," consisted of a set of large color photographs and a series of 10-foot-high paintings titled after the seven deadly sins: Lust, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony, Anger, Pride and Envy. In the literature that accompanies the work, Howard states that she has substituted her love of painting for the sinful passions referred to in the work.

Howard spent over two years on the deliriously elegant "Sin" series, within which there is only slight imagistic variation. All seven paintings contain a glowing yellow cross glimpsed through a curtain of vertical brushstrokes painted in crimson, maroon and burgundy, colors Howard likens to "dead blood, expelled blood." The paintings are a big experience, with a cinematic punch. Light intensity varies from the effulgence of Avarice to the lugubriousness of Pride.

Howard finishes the paintings by applying many layers of acrylic gloss. This, in effect, distances the viewer from the works, unifying the material presence so that the paintings become pure image. In Avarice, for example, the red draperylike strokes are slightly parted and much of the deeply placed yellow light streams dramatically toward the front surface, where it is halted by the thick, clear aspic of the plastic medium.

The deep, glossy surfaces could be interpreted as Howard's way of examining the distance between religious imagery and her professed atheism. Alternately, the slivers of light coming through the parted curtains could be taken as wounds, as in representations of Christ that depict light passing through his tortured body. Or Howard might be casting herself as a doubting Thomas, the New Testament apostle who needed to put his hand in Christ's pierced side in order to believe.

In comparison with the "Sin" paintings. Howard's C-prints on the Bower level of me two-story Bohen Foundation space were comparatively humble, though at 66 1/2 by 49 inches still large-scale. The effect was like attending Low Mass after experiencing the High-Mass pomp of the paintings. This series of photographed views, executed in France, is dominated by the cross, this time derived from shadowy foreground crosspieces of window frames. Where the paintings place the viewer outside of a dramatic apparition, the photographs implicate the viewer in an interior, where the gaze is broken by cruciform silhouettes before reaching a distant, blurry landscape or sky.

Seductive but baffling, this show seemed to be about smashing together religion's power of affirmation and art's questioning stance in order to see what happens.--Joe Fyfe

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