Those who follow ArtMonkeyWrench know that I have begun posting reviews and essays from the New Art Examiner and other publications that ceased to exist before the Internet, and so have not been available online. In Chicago to catch the Hairy Who retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, an excellent and long, long, long overdue exhibition, I had the welcome opportunity to see Judith Geichman’s solo show at Regard’s Gallery. I had reviewed Geichman’s powerful show at the Spertus Museum for the New Art Examiner thirty years ago, shortly before I moved to New York, and was pleased to have the chance to catch up on where her work is now. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, she has continued the direction described in the review below – “a stripped-down palette comprised only of orange, black, and white…eschews a premeditated structure altogether and completely gives itself over to process”.
Judith Geichman
Untitled, 2018
Acrylic, spray paint, on canvas
78 x 59 inches
Her palette remains highly circumscribed to a handful of colors, but the structure alluded to in the earlier paintings, hinting of monumental and complex metaphysical constructions, has given away to references of buildings, and perhaps by extension a world, in a state of glacial decay. Less drawn and more poured than the earlier work, these new paintings are yet just as meditative and more elegant than the body of work that first caught my attention years ago. Geichman’s show at Regards Gallery, 2216 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL, is up through December 22nd. What follows below is my New Art Examiner review originally published in the April 1988 issue.
Judith Geichman
Spertus Museum of Judaica
New Art Examiner April 1988
Judith Geichman
Traces of Metatron
Oil and wax medium on canvas
88 x 120 inches
It’s not often that an exhibition reveals a major breakthrough in an artist’s work, yet that’s just what this series of paintings by Judith Geichman clearly shows. Conventional wisdom, and the dictates of commercial galleries, has it that older works and an artist’s anomalies can often be confusing to viewers (and potential collectors). Curator Hannah Dresner and Geichman chose instead to illuminate the artist’s rather amazing growth over the last four years by presenting earlier and experimental works alongside new pieces to stunning effect.
The earliest painting, Meeting within the Temenos, 1984 is a solid example of Geichman’s work from that year. Depicting a temple-like structure with paired columns containing a swirling, pattern-oriented abstraction, the paint was applied in tight, short strokes utilizing a complex palette of high-key colors. The work’s composition and process evoke references to Celtic illuminated manuscripts of the ninth century. It is a successfully meditative work, and stands quite well as a record of unswerving diligence on the artist’s part. Geichman is quoted in the accompanying gallery literature as saying that she wanted to “build a temple with paint”, and this is both the painting’s triumph and failure. While the paint conveys a surface solidarity contributing to an overall architectonic quality, the work is also static in feel, its energy frozen and crystalized. Geichman’s concept of the ineffable is recorded, but in a fossilized state.
Geichman’s work during the next year, as presented in Busy Head I and Busy Head II, clearly reflects her growing frustration with her own processes. While much remains the same, the application has begun to change. The marks of these works are wider and more gestural, the pattern more open to the variations of application. The next three pieces, Flapping of Great Wings I, Flapping of Great Wings II, and Angel of Light and Dark, all works on paper from 1987, begin to actualize this major shift in Geichman’s focus. The clear structure of the temple has been replaced by a structure of a nonspecific nature, and the palette, so complex in the earlier work, moves toward simplification. The brushwork, so tight and flat previously, is loose, open, and reflects the process more than the result. While this change creates problems in Flapping of Great Wings I – with the color dissolving into mud in many areas – it eventually erupts into the anomalous but breakthrough work titled Angelic Dance.
With a stripped-down palette comprised only of orange, black, and white, Angelic Dance eschews a premeditated structure altogether and completely gives itself over to process – referring not to the ninth-century art but to DeKoonings of the 50s.
A true synthesis of her earlier structures and later gestural works, Traces of Metatron, 1988 – with its washes, smears, gestural marks, and translucent structure – is an interactive piece that allows the viewer to participate fully in the unraveling of the mysteries contained. It is a rich, powerful work that is satisfying for its open-ended yet complete resolution. More importantly, it heralds a dramatic new maturity on the part of Geichman and unequivocally moves her toward the forefront of Chicago abstractionists.
Deven Golden
