Selected Essays & Reviews
Darren Waterston at Charles Cowles
Darren Waterston's seventh exhibition at Charles Cowles, titled "Ghosts", consisted of 28 oil-on-panel paintings, ranging in size from 9 inches square to 72 by 48 inches (all 2003). The smaller works, 21 in all, were beautifully displayed in a random formation on one wall. One striking difference between these and Waterston's paintings of the past few years is his palette. His earlier, less subdued works contained elements of vibrant oranges and reds, acidic greens, bright pinks and yellows. Waterston primarily uses icy grays, baby pinks, pearlescent whites and blues, rusty reds and ochers.
Waterston, though, preserves his signature style: a unique brand of abstraction with an ardent attention to surface finish. His imagery has consistently depended on organic forms: circles, curlicues, entrail-like shapes, leaves and branches. His paintings are smooth and slick, a quality he achieves with layers of paint and glazes. These are the kind of paintings that would seem to have been made without the clumsy imperfection of the human hand, were it not for the odd glob or drip of paint randomly appearing on the surface. Waterston's technique is as mysterious as the eerily suggestive forms in his compositions.
This new body of work, according to the artist, was inspired by his trip to Japan in 2002. A Japanese influence is most apparent in the painting Tower (48 by 30 inches). Floating on a black background is an abstracted landscape rendered in the sort of flattened perspective commonly found in Japanese woodblock prints by, for example, Hokusai or Hiroshige. In the upper right corner, a transparent, blurry patch of white suggests mist. Elongated upright ovals, rendered with translucent washes of yellowish paint, rise up from the bottom of the panel like mountains. Thin, treelike forms are delicately brushed in red and gold at their base. White drips of paint seem to rain down, marring the otherwise pristine surface.
Waterston is a master of constructing unlikely interactions between forms. Gust (60 inches square) involves two French curves on a gray and white, cloudlike background. One curve enters the composition from the top edge, the other from the bottom. The former is followed by a trail of bluish gray, tear-shaped "drips" flatly painted by hand. The two forms reach toward the center of the canvas, where a cluster of black tear- or sperm-like shapes converge on an umber vortex.
Perhaps the strongest work in the exhibition was Phantom (60 by 84 inches). Thematically similar to Tower, it features a dark ground with mountainlike shapes as the central element. This time, though, loosely circular patterns of small white dots are sprinkled about like fireworks, and three scribbled, bubble-gum-pink balloons drift around the mountain, providing a colorful touch of whimsy. Whether his works are playful or contemplative, it is the artist's deft paint handling that makes them compelling.
[Waterston's work could be seen at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tenn., from Jan. 31 to May 16.]
Copyright © 2004, Art in America.