Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Art in America, Jan, 1995 by Lilly Wei

Matthew Marks's new Chelsea space--a former truck garage--is breathtaking. Lighted by seven skylights and divided into three galleries and an ample reception area, the interior is enticingly visible from the street and seems made for Ellsworth Kelly's large-scaled recent works, which will remain on view to the end of this month. As expected, they are vivid in color and distinctively formulated, ranging in size from 7 to 10 feet in their largest dimension. Most often, a juxtaposition between a color shape and a black or white shape is presented. As also expected, they are handsome, assured, marked by utter precision as well as an absolute and specific presence.

The main gallery held his two-panel, two-color shaped reliefs which superimpose one plane over the other. Yellow Relief with Blue (1991), Blue Relief with Black (1993), Yellow Relief with Black (1993), Black Relief with White (1994) and--in another room, reiterating the latter's composition--White Relief with Green (1994) look as if they had been folded, closed up, putting the definition of their shapes into question. The clean, simple geometric figures are both what they are and illusional.

Green Relief with Blue (1993), on the other hand, is more open, resembling a partial isometric projection; it is the only work in the show where a single diagonal predominates. The dropped, obliquely angled green panel is firmly held against the blue, slippage under complete control; the potential awkwardness of the total configuration is banished by a compelling balance of color and shape. Blue Relief with Black is notable for the subtlety of its curve while Yellow Relief with Black, with its large expansive triangle--which looks equilateral but isn't--aimed to the left like a directional sign, is paired with a black rectangle that extends downward part of the way, its actual form visible only from the side. Monumental and contained, these shaped reliefs depend less on the wall than many of his previous works.

Yet Kelly is an artist of the figure/ground relationship, of the placement of the image-object in its environment, whether canvas, wall or floor. In the small rear gallery, four rectangular canvases painted white with white edges are emblazoned with the same form, a curved wedge of intense green, red-orange, blue and yellow which touches the sides at three points. Here, he seems to be confining the shaped, monochromatic panels of the '80s within a pictorial field. But then there are Red Curved Panel (1994) and White Curved Panel (1994)--both rimmed by a beautiful shadow--which are exact replicas of the paintings' fans and the only shaped, single-color works here, stunning in their simplicity; they appropriate the wall once again and are part of the Kelly gradient between flat painting and freestanding object.

The cover photo of the impeccable catalogue that accompanies the show was taken by the artist, and reveals one of his main themes. The image is of a snow-covered field which slowly, gracefully and ineluctably curves, the whiteness met by dark, bared branches, trunks and underbrush; there is a slight shimmy at the "edge" where "figure" meets "ground," a slight, almost imperceptible radiance softening the austere line. This is classic Kelly, as, with extraordinary clarity and elation, he distills the world through passionately dispassionate eyes.