Neil Marshall 11.12.01

neilmarshall.com

A couple of years ago a small painting of Robert Melzmuf stood out particularly in a group show at 55 Mercer St. It was a small work measuring under a foot in either direction, but there was something about it that in retrospect should be called courageous. His one-person show currently at the same gallery confirms that earlier work. Artlessness, an inspired use or accident, an uningratiating palette, and a gift for simplicity have all conspired to achieve one of the best exhibitions of abstract art in some time. So rarely does a show of recent work suffer from an overabundance of good ideas that it seems churlish to complain, but the woodcuts here deserve a space to themselves; beautifully drawn with a fluidity closer to monotype, they raise fascinating questions of intention and design that form a quite distinct counterpoint to the paintings. In the best of the paintings Melzmuf develops a complex set of hues. cream on white, greyed rose. ambiguous umbers for example that finally resolve themselves in a unitary effect, a gestalt, consisting most typically of warm, even hot color. Arriving at a post-Hofmann compositional sense that also seems to owe something to Twombly, these paintings manage to avoid distinct figure-ground relationships. The specific hues locate themselves somewhere between a shape and a mark with an effective use of incised drawing and a minimum amount of paint. Unlike the prints, the paintings seem to eliminate both intention and design as much as possible, and promise a truly symbiotic dichotomy between these art forms that is already well established. With this exhibition, Robert Melzmuf has conclusively emerged as one of the best abstract artist currently working in New York.