29 Jan 2021

Peri Schwartz: Self Portraits & Studio Paintings

Gallery NAGA

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

Cezanne's efforts to inject structure back into Impressionism suggested that measurement, executed visually, might be a fruitful approach. Consequently there is a modest but important stream of measurement-driven painting in modern art, exemplified by the Euston Road School and their descendants, among others.

Peri Schwartz works in a related vein with a Hofmannesque timbre. She sets up still lifes of clear bottles filled with colored water on a glass table. Behind it she places painted boards and sheets of paper. The process of rendering the scenes entails a straight edge with ruled horizontals, verticals, and angles, sometimes drawn in charcoal, occasionally cut into the paint with the ruler itself. The continual echo of the four physical edges of the pictures enforces unity and justifies her abstraction.

Displayed alongside them are self-portraits from the 1980s and '90s. They are not as able but the determination in them is already total. When the show culminates in Studio LVII (2020) - just look at that series number - its sunny cheerfulness belies how hard-fought it was.