Alan Kleiman at O'Hara - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Art in America, Feb, 1997 by Karen S. Chambers

To call Alan Kleiman's recent oil paintings monochromatic is to miss their nuanced, subtle color and delicately textured surfaces. They are lush, and contain far more human reference than most works in the monochrome genre. All the canvases in this recent exhibition, titled "Chasing Shadows," are body-scaled and body-proportioned. Most are taller than wide, suggesting a standing figure. The way they were made also gives them a metaphorically human quality: each is built up layer by layer of varied hues and then scratched to reveal strata of information and experience, suggestive of the accumulation of a life.

Mold chases shadows is French blue with flecks of a complementary orange showing through where the surface was obsessively scored. The action also left darker, roughed-up blue lines. The edge of the stretcher shows that there is a surprising lime-green layer submerged in the deep blue -- deep both in color and in spatial reference. Infinity is not suggested, but rather an odd illusory space that does not entirely deny the flatness of the picture plane. This atmospheric color levitates in front of the gallery's bright white walls while confirming the reality of the painting's surface. This is most apparent in the violet-hued Wine is night. The surface is richly textured with patches of deeper grape and a very visible matrix of scribbles made in the wet paint with a dental drill. it is so active that it almost appears flocked. One may think of Jules Olitsk's sprayed canvases, but the maker's hand is much more visible here, recording a process that is more Abstract Expressionist than lyrical abstractionist.

These are serious paintings, but there is wit as well as poetry in the titles. These strengths were supported by the sensitive hanging of the exhibition, which featured a group of three paintings in slightly off versions of the primary colors -- a scarlet, a mellow yellow, a Prussian blue -- called Scarlet at O'Hara, Curtains to heaven and Stealing the sky.

Kleiman has been pursuing a similar line of esthetic inquiry for many years, and despite its apparent narrowness of focus, d remains absorbing for both artist and viewer.