Washington Post, Friday, September 28th, 2012, Style Section p. C8
“Taking Art Beyond the Frame”
by Mark Jenkins
‘Works with Paper’
GA Gardner arrays shards of cut, scraped and over-painted magazine clippings on sheets of mylar to make montages such as the one pictured above.
The title of Morton Fine Art’s current group show, “Works with Paper,” suggests art that uses paper as medium. The exhibition does feature a few collages that combine paper with other substances, including plastic and metal. G.A. Gardner arrays shards of cut, scraped and over-painted magazine clippings on sheets of mylar to make such montages as “Dangerous,” a striking wall of brick-like shapes on a mostly black field. The show consists, mostly, however, of works on paper. These aren’t especially experimental, but many of them are appealingly bold, both in technique and size.
The paintings on paper, many of them representational, include Laurel Hausler’s portrayals of dolls in wax and oil, with one picture executed on a coffee stained sheet. Rosemary Feit makes stark black-and-white woodcuts that depict girls or women, often accompanied by animals. (There’s also an angrier-looking one that incorporates red.) Using watering acrylics in darker hot colors, Choichun Leung executes billowing abstractions that suggest radio-telescope images of distant galaxies.
In one of the show’s largest pieces, Victor Ekpuk pairs pastel with graphite to depict a pulsing blue orb on a field of glyphs. The most memorable pictures are Vonn Sumner’s Mediterranean (or perhaps Red Sea) cityscapes, which achieve a contemporary air via an ancient form: They’re executed in tempera, with a warm-hued palette that suits their subject.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 