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David Lozano: Maladjusted Beauty

June 1 - July 3, 2007

Zolla Lieberman Gallery
325 W. Huron
Chicago, IL 60610
tel.: 312-944-1990
hours: Tue-Fri 10a-5:30p; Sat 11a-5:30p; Sun-Mon closed
http://www.zollaliebermangallery.com/

In Maladjusted Beauty, seductions of color, texture and looping ribbons of paint define shapes with a lavish, organic quality. Seven paintings by David Lozano are on exhibit, uncanny psychological spaces, sea-colored, candy-colored, often dancing with unfocused circles like the lens flares of refracted sunlight as they reveal to us strange worlds of pleasure and beauty.

Half the pleasure is in the way the magnificently loopy, free-form swathes of high-gloss paint or tinted glue define the image, serving as boundaries, borders, and providing startling contrasts. As in A Modest Gesture Amplified (acrylic, resin, sequins and glue on canvas: 36 x 36 in.: 2006), these lustrous ribbons both exist in space and move within it, gracefully, like liquified motion. Within and behind are areas of color and texture, often even the sparkle of sequins or glitter. The rhythms and odd juxtapositions have a random, Rorschach-like quality, in which there is delight in the freedom of association. Is that a waterfall, a wind-worn mesa, a dragonfly wing? Each new interpretation of an area as 'something' cascades into a revised interpretation of the areas around it, a visual game of accommodation and malleability that gives durable appeal to these images of opulent color.

These paintings also explore the ways in which visual textures can create impressions of spatial depth and placement. The juxtaposed areas are not simply individual regions filled with color. Here the bolder textures, high gloss areas, and darker colors advance, taking control of an implied foreground, while paler color areas seem subordinate or receding. Color itself has an emotional component, and these color compositions evenly reflect a coherence of mood, some working with a palette of warm, dancing reds, others with cool aqua-greens and blues. A background of gradated color provides a luminous, ambiguous area within which the constructions float or hover, giving a spatial depth that enhances the feel of psychological roominess.

Lozano's paintings reveal that texture is sexy and suggestive. Bounding, reaching, grasping, these sleekly finished works frame realms to pleasurably inhabit. Seven paintings are on exhibit. Also running concurrently is the exhibition prairiesummerheartbreak by Julie Farstad.

--Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.