Mary
Obering at Annina Nosei Gallery 1988
New York
City, New York |
Mary Obering's recent work,
a hybrid of painting and sculpture, places an attractively varied
formal vocabulary at the service of some rather quirky ideas.
On the whole, the single-paneled, more painting like works are
the most engaging. These are simple abstract geometric compositions
rendered on gessoed masonite in an array of dense, concentrated
substances including burnishing clay and tempera in an encaustic
medium. One piece consists of four odd-sized rectangular fields:
a column like element of russet-brown scored with subtle crosshatching;
another of gold leaf that abuts a nearly square field of dove-gray,
troubled with delicate, wispy strokes as if a wax buffer had
been passed over the surface; and finally, running down the side
and across the bottom of the painting, a big, horizontally oriented
L of a creamy, ivory white encaustic. The effect of the whole
piece was rather like that afforded by antique polychromed alabaster:
it looked at once precious and synthetic, sumptuous and inexpressively
decorative, even tacky. (Among younger painters Obering's work
brings Michael Young's most quickly to mind).
Elsewhere in the show ambiguous
glamour gave way to real singularity. As if to provide a key,
Obering included a piece dating from 1983. Titled Elements, it
consisted of four small, discrete, shaped paintings hung one
above the other, one containing an image of the moon sitting
among schematic waves for Water, another a small red triangular
painting of flames for Fire, and so on. The modular format, the
use of small images, and the eccentric mapping-out of the wall
surface are all characteristics of Obering's new and more radically
"sculptural" work. Muon Maker, for instance, flat and
entirely wall-depending, has at its center a jagged vertical
form, like a thick schematic bolt of lightning. From each of
the canvas's four squared-off corners projected a round, medallion
like panel bearing abstract symbols - a yellow cross on white
ground, a silver rectangle on black, and odd little M-shaped
wave forms, of a kind familiar from the 1983 piece but now so
abstract as to give the round shapes the look of public directional
signs.
If Elements and the recent
abstract panels suggest the past - an alchemical mystery in the
one, an imperial elegance in the other - Muon Maker seems intended
to evoke the future, and specifically technology (a muon, it
may be noted, is a species of nuclear particle). Yet the future
the artist appears to have in mind is that of the Star-Wars variety
of a decade ago; her cutout stepped shape climbing up the wall,
culminating in a little black cross which looks as if it's about
to commence a free-fall, transports us into a world of portentous,
spiritualizing, irresistible claptrap. It is an appealing world
as Obering has made it, but not one that invites an extended
stay. In fact, its chief function in this show was to send us
back with deepened interest to the complex beauty of Obering's
abstract paintings.
Holland Cotter
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