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Victoria Pedersen NEW YORK - A gestural abstractionist whose work evokes the ceremonial and the ritualistic, James Nares uses two key elements of picture-making - line and colour - to create sensuous looping shapes that seem to dance before our eyes. Nares's most recent work, which is on view at the Paul Kasmin Gallery (74 Grand St) from Sept 4 through October 4, plays with paradox. These seemingly spontaneous paintings belie a method that is controlled and systematic. Using an eight-inch-wide tapered brush that he designed himself, Nares sweeps a single, translucent and jewel-like color across the canvas in one quick movement. After assessing the result, Nares erases the mark and begins again, varying the rhythm and speed of the brush like a maestro, often creating up to 100 marks until the desired effect is achieved. The rhythmic intricacy of Take 44, 1997, has an immediacy that straps itself on the mind and the eye, while closer inspection reveals a rich visual conundrum, a Möbius strip that articulates an impossible movement. While painting's role will surely continue to be usurped by photography and video, Nares proves that daring and inventiveness, as well as beauty and mystery, will continue to invigorate this always dying-but somehow never dead-form. |