[his italics]... for a lifetime.” These muscle
magazines (as I suppose), with their cars and
babes, are hardly unique to “Southern Man,”
of course. The commercialization of sex and
self-esteem is universal. Yet these small,
generally high-key semi-abstractions—with
their glimpses of beer cans and bottles, ciga-
rettes, chewing tobacco, gesturing hands,
flexed arms, bellies, eyes and lips—are
strangely poetic and even powerful. Puff,
Cup, Skoal, Refresh, Cig, Nails, and Swig,
(all 2015) with their laconic Pop titles, make
the banality of mass-market consumerism
and the psychic wound of cultural dislocation,
universally experienced in the modern world,
aesthetically meaningful, like Dada pho-
tomontages and Rauschenberg’s ghostly
image transfers. We are all Sisyphus; Fren-
hofer, c’est nous.
—DEWITT CHENG
SAN FRANCISCO
Alan Ebnother: “twelve paintings”
at George Lawson Gallery
Alan Ebnother is the kind of artist who
lives and breathes painting, for whom the
materials of oil and pigment, and the process
of their manipulation, transcend an interest
in creating something with a particular
look, rather presenting a continual voyage
of discovery. As a young painter, he was
drawn to the work of artists Joseph Marioni
and Phil Sims, members of the New York-
based Radical Painting group, whose
shared aesthetic focused on monochromatic
canvases—also proposing the dis-
engagement of the profession of painting
from the myriad concerns of the broader art
world. The older artists took Ebnother undertheir wing, teaching him invaluable skills in
handling pigment and oil mediums, learning
to grind and mix his own colors.Color, certainly, is Ebnother’s passion. Earlier
bodies of his work solely explored variations
on the hue of green; while this particular
chroma continues to receive significant
attention, he has since branched out into
the full spectrum of colors. His self-imposed
“rules” for a painting supply a kind of moral
structure, imbuing a sense of integrity to the
work that gives it dignity and power. For his
latest show at George Lawson, Ebnother
presented “twelve paintings” each 25-inch
square, made of oil and dry pigment on linen.
Ebnother, who was originally from the Bay
Area, now maintains studios near Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and just outside of Leipzig,
Germany.#15, September 12th, 2015
suggests foliage, slathered in short,
energetic brushstrokes of a muted, creamy
green like split pea soup. The thickly
impastoed strokes set up a dynamic rhythm,
while strong diagonals, often ending abruptly
in feathery tails, draw the eye up and down
the canvas. A pair of inverted ‘V’ shapes near
the top edge describe a hairpin turn of the
brush, a thick rim of paint just below the
curve documenting the residue of this swift
motion, like a ripple frozen in water. While
thick paint encrusts most of the canvas,
the linen ground appears between the thick
patches, its coarse texture asserting its
presence. Thin underpainting in cobalt blue
and mauve flickers around the edges. In
#6, June 1st, 2015a color like wet clay, just
faintly greenish, meets a variation with a faint
pinkish-purple hue. Thick strokes in scabrous
textures scuttle this way and that. Bright
greens and blues peek through. A trick
of afterimage may be at play, further
complicating the chromatic complexity.
Ebnother, a former ballet dancer, deftly
engages the viewer in the rapt choreography
of his committed gestures.
—BARBARA MORRISSAN FRANCISCO
Elena Dorfman: “Sublime: The LA River”
at Modernism Inc.
Sometimes history has an interesting way
of repeating itself. Layers of time leave
marks and impressions on the landscape,
carrying with it stories and visual cues that
lapse or remain. The indelibility of these
historical traces is documented in Elena
Dorfman’s series of photographs on view
at Modernism. “Sublime: The LA River”
features several large-scale works printed
on metallic paper that imparts an eerie glow.The Los Angeles River was originally chris-
tened El Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de
Los Ángeles de Porciúncula by Franciscan
explorers who descended upon indigenous
Tongva land in 1769. The concrete channeling
of the river as we know it today was initiated
in 1938. Dorfman visited the river and took
thousands of photographs, then layered
them with historical archives to create
acutely detailed and painterly collage. The
layers contest the notion that photography
“captures” moments or freezes time; here,
time is stretched, and the history of a single
location spans the years. The layers also im-
part a blurry quality that creates a sense of
uncertainty. In true Transcendentalist fashion,
much like the painters of the Hudson River
School or of European Romanticism of the
1800s, Dorfman’s landscapes conjure the
deep-seated awe of confronting vast space.In particular, Sublime LA 8and 10 place the
viewer at water’s edge, seemingly hovering
just out of frame above a presumed embank-
ment. Breathtakingly vivid color enhances
each ripple in the water, and each branch on
the foliage. Small clues of human presence
remark upon the fragility of nature, such as
white plastic grocery store bags tangled in
the bramble, or a skeletal powerline rising
above the trees. Human intervention with
nature is especially pointed in series num-
bers 4 and 7 , where Dorfman has utilized
bridge underpasses to create bold geometric
compositions. In each of these, the Brutalist-
like black-and-gray concrete alongside ochre
and olive toned plant-life is reflected in the
water below. The mirroring in the reflections
creates an enclosed feeling, emphasizing the
domineering effects of colonialization and in-
dustry. Dorfman is most well-known for her
documentation of cultural and sexual practices
within marginalized and deviant social commu-
nities, including Fandomaniawhich explores
the participants of Cosplay, or Still Loversfea-
turing people who live with Real Dolls. In the
last three years, she has been pursuing land-
scape. While the portraiture has its merits as
historical archive of fringe societies, the land-:reviews
28 art ltd - March / April 2016“#15, September 12th 2015”
2015, Alan Ebnother
Oil, pigment, wax on linen
251 ⁄ 4 " x 25^1 ⁄ 4 "
Photo: courtesy George Lawson Gallery“Swig,” 2015, Paul Mullins
Colored pencil, acrylic and paper on panel
12" x 9"
Photo: courtesy Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art