IN FLUENT FORM 2004
IN FLUENT FORM 2004
Paul Henry Ramirez at Mary Boone Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell
Funny, smart and extravagantly seductive abstractions wired into a circuit board that charts longing and desire, Paul Henry Ramirez’s newest paintings, all of them dated 2004, romance the arabesques and curls of Aubrey Beardsley out of the loopy, tweaked dreamland of Lari Pittman. In these acrylic-on-canvas works, which range from 60 to 78 inches square, suggestive figures are often crowned by exuberant masses of curls, salaciously linked by less than innocent diagrams that smooch and hold hands, working out their monkey business on pristine white fields. Each field is built up of gesso, each layer sanded to a flawless finish, the last one airbrushed smoother than any shell.
Ramirez titles each painting In Fluent Form, followed by its series number. Two prominent forms occupy In Fluent Form 5. Conjoined ovals of smooth, pure green that overflow the upper left quadrant are held aloft by a black bracket supported like a flower on a wiry stem. A rectangular reservoir of scarlet occupying much of the lower right quadrant expresses a somewhat thicker column of red that suggestively penetrates the cloven green pillow above. At the site of contact, glistening, brightly colored blobs of eccentrically placed circles spew forth like drops of lubricant erupting from some moist encounter.
In Fluent Form 2 expresses the controlled hysteria of Ramirez’s answer to the tradition of familial portraiture. The artist presents a surrealistic narrative involving the postcoital moments of improbable creatures and their hasty spawn. A whisper-thin and shining, purple-haired, arguably female figure stands a pace away from her fantastic opposite, a gesticulating abstraction of a caterpillar rendered in impasto; the creature is stretched out on a thoroughly rumpled bed. As though sated, it casts off a shower of frantic blood-red drops, while the spouse, every inch a mammal, sports a heart in place of a head—a cunning Ramirez hallmark—and comes equipped with horizontally opposed breasts tipped with olive shapes painted in shining, foil-like acrylic. Their precipitate spawn, a gosling of slinky wires, rests between its parents on a bit of incomprehensible circuitry.
With a naughty Hello Kitty of an embrace, In Fluent Form 4 joins two biomorphic cloudlike forms, one yellow, the other pink. They press against each other, seemingly in midair, spewing up a geyser of brightly colored disks and releasing tear-shaped drops, the immediate fruit of their joining. In celebration of the act, the yellow form sprouts tail feathers that quiver with forbidden joy. This is not perverse. Ramirez is serious about his painting. His draftsmanship is sure and fine, the palette cool and modern. First and last, each painting declares itself as an object, with occasional bands of color wrapped around the edge, as though to keep the painting from flying off the wall. -Edward Leffingwell
Paul Henry Ramirez at Mary Boone Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell
Funny, smart and extravagantly seductive abstractions wired into a circuit board that charts longing and desire, Paul Henry Ramirez’s newest paintings, all of them dated 2004, romance the arabesques and curls of Aubrey Beardsley out of the loopy, tweaked dreamland of Lari Pittman. In these acrylic-on-canvas works, which range from 60 to 78 inches square, suggestive figures are often crowned by exuberant masses of curls, salaciously linked by less than innocent diagrams that smooch and hold hands, working out their monkey business on pristine white fields. Each field is built up of gesso, each layer sanded to a flawless finish, the last one airbrushed smoother than any shell.
Ramirez titles each painting In Fluent Form, followed by its series number. Two prominent forms occupy In Fluent Form 5. Conjoined ovals of smooth, pure green that overflow the upper left quadrant are held aloft by a black bracket supported like a flower on a wiry stem. A rectangular reservoir of scarlet occupying much of the lower right quadrant expresses a somewhat thicker column of red that suggestively penetrates the cloven green pillow above. At the site of contact, glistening, brightly colored blobs of eccentrically placed circles spew forth like drops of lubricant erupting from some moist encounter.
In Fluent Form 2 expresses the controlled hysteria of Ramirez’s answer to the tradition of familial portraiture. The artist presents a surrealistic narrative involving the postcoital moments of improbable creatures and their hasty spawn. A whisper-thin and shining, purple-haired, arguably female figure stands a pace away from her fantastic opposite, a gesticulating abstraction of a caterpillar rendered in impasto; the creature is stretched out on a thoroughly rumpled bed. As though sated, it casts off a shower of frantic blood-red drops, while the spouse, every inch a mammal, sports a heart in place of a head—a cunning Ramirez hallmark—and comes equipped with horizontally opposed breasts tipped with olive shapes painted in shining, foil-like acrylic. Their precipitate spawn, a gosling of slinky wires, rests between its parents on a bit of incomprehensible circuitry.
With a naughty Hello Kitty of an embrace, In Fluent Form 4 joins two biomorphic cloudlike forms, one yellow, the other pink. They press against each other, seemingly in midair, spewing up a geyser of brightly colored disks and releasing tear-shaped drops, the immediate fruit of their joining. In celebration of the act, the yellow form sprouts tail feathers that quiver with forbidden joy. This is not perverse. Ramirez is serious about his painting. His draftsmanship is sure and fine, the palette cool and modern. First and last, each painting declares itself as an object, with occasional bands of color wrapped around the edge, as though to keep the painting from flying off the wall. -Edward Leffingwell