You'll notice a little bench in this spacious gallery near one of M-13's columns. Take it with you as
you go around the gallery looking at Ross Neher's oils on linen, his oils on paper and his watercolors.
You're going to need it. This exhibition has optical and perceptual tricks up its sleeve, and plenty of
emotional impact.
The press release at the gallery informs us that Naher's trip in 1993 to the Palazzo dei Consoli in
Gubbio, Italy, seems to have been epiphanous. It inspired him to forgo depicting the actual building as he
had done in prior years. A reevaluation of his work led him to attempt to delineate the spatial feel of the
Palazzo's magnificent piazza instead of the edifice itself. For Naher this was a decisive moment; the
building would be experienced through its absence, as the conventions and history of Western
perspective would be invigorated by applying its tenets within a minimalist format.
Naher's paintings are thick monochromes. There are blue paintings as well as red ones and yellow
ones. Each one is burnished to a high matte sheen. This matteness is one of the marvels of the exhibition.
Evidently taking great pains to arrive at these unreflective surfaces, Naher uses them as the springboards
for his optical effects. The surfaces assert the paintings' physicality and their groundedness in matter. No
sheen or reflections intrudes to dematerialize the object; dematerialization occurs using another
principle. Ethereal optical sensations emanate from these saturated surfaces and feelings sensations of
weightlessness are amplified through the physicality of the application of the paint and the crucial
compositions whose two formats vary slightly. By using a clear, simplified compositional structure of
three diagonal lines that converge at a horizon line, while keeping a fourth line horizontal, Naher
insinuates the presence of the locale's steps and walls, a place that leads you to an edge of space at the
mid-way point of each painting. Through this synthetic perspective, the eye of the viewer travels quickly
along a wedge of space, and is catapulted outward beyond the horizon line and inward into deep
coloristic space filled with light. This is an account of the mechanics of the experience.
But seeing, as they say, is believing. And as I say, that little bench will come in handy. You'll need it to
sit quietly in order to let your eyes relax as they rest on the surface of each painting as it works its
magic.
Ancora, 1996 is a large painting on the wall opposite the entrance door across the gallery
floor. It's primarily a cerulean blue object that wanders into thalos and the cobalts; only after a while
will your retina discern the viridian greens that percolate through the various blues at the walls' edges in
the composition. As you keep looking at the painting, what originally seemed to be flat areas become
spatially involuted: volumetric density disintegrates into pure space and haloed light, and soon, the
reverse happens, as atmospheric tonalities harden into planar contours. The prize here is the optical
sumptuousness at play.
Notice the bottom edges of each painting. The undercoats of paint are revealed as archeological
layers revealing the history of the painting's own making, a device which brings all of this back into
reality, away from science-fair tricks, away from clinical detachment, and into high and committed
artmaking. Naher's shimmering inverses of spatiality have a tremorous quality that is especially
appealing. The deckled edges of his paintings create fragile, willowy, silhouetted settings for his
quivering optical experiences to take place. Familia, 1995 is in a niche to the right of
Quartetto Italiano, 1996, the four panel-piece immediately to your left as you enter the gallery.
Familia is another blue painting, and it overwhelms you with its nuances and subtleties.
In Quartetto Italiano, of the four yellow paintings don't miss spending time looking over the
richness of the second panel from the left. This painting makes the eye travel through planes playfully
oscillating between Naples yellow against yellow ochres. A must see.
I've never been to Gubbio, the famous little medieval town in Umbria that so inspired
Naher. And I can't report on the success or failure of the artist's attempted re-creation of the
town square's spatial verisimilitude. What I can report is that the recessional
elements and coloristic play within the pictorial space of the artist's massive paintings contain
a quality of emanating light and volumetric expansiveness that is as exhilarating as the
introspection they foster in this viewer. A very good exhibition.
Copyright ©1997 Dominique Nahas & REVIEW All Rights Reserved
Dominique Nahas is former chief curator of contemporary art at Everson Museum and former director of the
Neuberger Museum. He is now an independent curator, critic and art historian.