Modern Painters

BLOUINARTINFO.COM JUNE/JULY 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 105``````studio. They’re funky little DIY oddities, slap-dash and strange, ranging from a small woodpanel punctured with staples to what appearsto be a miniature riff on Barnett Newman. Thisshow also includes two canvases that hungat Documenta 9 in 1992, both sharing a washed-out bloody tint that brings to mind stainedmedical gauze or fabric. But even with theseworks, the atmosphere is one of floating,contemplative beauty; De Keyser might disruptthe surface of an almost-monochrome, as hedoes in 1990’s Z—the title surely a joke aboutZorro wielding a palette knife—but the endresult remains even-keeled and fairly serene.(There’s but one outlier in this show that isn’tafraid to be outwardly ugly: Closerie I (BerlinerEnsemble), 1998, lays ragged lines of scabbyred over a white ground that’s marred withpassages of pigment resembling the yellowedteeth of a heavy smoker.)Loock stresses De Keyser’s swiftness in thestudio, surmising that a piece like Front, 1992,which hung at Documenta 9, likely took no morethan half an hour to complete. Naysayers mightscoff, but the artist’s facility with color sets himapart from other practitioners of so-called pro-visional painting. These canvases don’t alwayspresent well in photographs, partly because ofthe way buried zones of pigment can gleam andpeek through what has been laid atop them. DeKeyser was known for painting over, and over,and over compositions, so that a finished work—like Dalton, 1990—might end up as four bluecircles poking through an opaque scrim of tan.This show does make clear that De Keyserexcelled in small to medium formats, and whenhe stayed as far away from recognizable shapesor forms as possible. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule:Bern-Berlin hangend, 1993, is a great painting thatis obvious in its representation of tree branches;Detail, 2005, an almost traditional landscapebased on a photograph De Keyser took himself, isone of the most intriguing works in the exhibition.But a trio of large-scale paintings—Come on,play it again, nr._4, and nr._2, both 2001, and Siesta,2000—lack the same quirky joy as the moremodestly sized works. Those three—with cellularBrice Marden-ish blobs, or washy, lozenge-shapedpods of color, or a waterfall of cascading ovals—don’t seem to take the same risks.Thankfully, everything else here is aboutrisk rewarded. I’ll admit to being a little in lovewith these works, and also with the quasi-mythical persona of De Keyser himself, happilyat odds with the tradition of grandly gesturaland self-satisfied male abstract painters. “At acertain point, he’d stop working on the paintingand place it on the floor, facing toward thewall,” recalls the artist’s grandson NielsDe Keyser in a catalogue essay for the show.“Two weeks later he’d turn it back aroundand continue. He’d add a dot or maybe a line.Afterward, he watched his paintings for along time. Sitting with a bit of music and justlooking at the paintings that were hangingthere. He did that a lot.” De Keyser comesacross as a diligent, contemplative tinkerer, onewho—with devotion and patience—achieveda quiet sort of magic. —SIRaoul De KeyserFROM TOP:Come on,play it again,nr._2, 2001.Oil on canvas,51¼ x 74 in.Front, 1992.Oil on canvas,BOTH IMAGES: DAVID ZWIRNER 65 x 48½ in.