Ficus #2, 2009, oil/canvas, 30 inches square
The reproduced image does not serve painters such as Eric Elliott, now on view at James Harris Gallery. Reproduced, what is fluid becomes static.
Elliott is interested in where the viewer stands in relation to his painting. In shaggy, blue-gray to dark-green tones, he reexamines Seurat‘s working methods: daubs of color laid side by side that dissolve to abstraction when viewed up close but assume the contours of representational form in the distance.
What doesn’t interest him is Seurat’s shimmering lights. Aside from Ficus 2, reproduced above, in his present show Elliott is happy to root around in painterly mud. Ficus 2 offers slender gleams of brighter shades buried subtly in the center, like fleeting hallucinations.
For Elliott, air is a contagion. It sticks to leaves and cramps their blooms, which press powerfully back to hold their own. He animates sludge, which is no small thing.
Through Oct. 3.
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