04 Oct 2019

Deborah Zlotsky: Now and later

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

Reviewed by Ashley Norwood Cooper

Undulating in the non-breeze of the gallery are assemblages of silk scarves from the 1960s and '70s. For me, they are personal and nostalgic. My grandmother had a drawer full of such scarves and I played with them as a child, layering patterns and transparencies as Deborah Zlotsky does in her assemblages.

The Pop Art colors in Zlotsky's mind-bending abstract paintings are like those in the scarves. Illusions of form are created by every means known: value shifts, merging orthogonals, varying color temperature and intensity.

The surfaces are complex and varied, including hard and soft edges, scratches, and stains. In Loophole (2019) a drip-mark may have inspired a tightly rendered green thread that connects two blocks of color. Systems appear, but quickly fall apart.

Color draws me in but something darker holds my attention. My grandmother died of Alzheimer's in 1999. Her glamour descended into confusion. My own certainty crumbles into competing realities. What resonates about these paintings is not their promise, but the captivating hold of promises unfulfilled.