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Roberta Smith Art in Review James Nares understands that if you're going to be a one-note painter, the least you can do is develop perfect pitch. He is becoming an expert at his speciality: broad, calligraphic brush strokes, usually no more than three or four to a painting, in transparent tones of blue, red or yellow or a sharp white oil that suggest ink. These strokes twist and turn, furl and unfurl their way across canvases palely tinted by wiped-out previous attempts, creating fat serpent-like incidents of suspended liquidity and gesture. Mr. Nares's precedents are clear and tend toward the ironic: Lichtenstein's big Pop Art brush strokes of the mid-1960's, and also Gerhard Richter's weirdly photographic ones from a decade later. He brings to the table an unexpected, almost Zen-like purity, sincere because it is so evidently concentrated and skilled. The danger in all this is that he might become the next Paul Jenkins - that is, slickly bravuristic and monotonous. The saving grace, in addition to the scale and simplicity, is that Mr. Nares paints with breath-taking ease, but without making it look easy. |