The best reason to see the first Wind Fleisher Challenge of this season (ends today) is Arden Bendler Brownings enormous abstract cityscapes.
They are active and big enough to immerse a person in the vertiginous rhythms of the city. The paint handling is expressive and varied, an outdoor patchwork of fabrics and glancing shards of light–Diebenkorn on East Coast speed. These are very like the small ones she showed at AHN-VHS about a year ago, but the ambitious scaling up turns them into another thing altogether.
Alongside Browning’s confidence and daring, the other two artists seem timid. Amy Stevens is showing her now familiar cake photos–images of excess–and Matthew Thomas Cianfrani is showing photos and a video depicting the environmental cost of the new China.
Cianfrani’s hanging Chinese screen supports for his images are precious and no surprise, but the message comes through loud and clear. The video, so similar to the still photos, is a missed opportunity to expand this work in a new direction.
