Antonio Puri

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'Inner Circles' exhibit stretches and burns

 

By Geoff Gehman
Of The Morning Call

February 12, 2004

Kutztown University's ''Inner Circles'' is a playground for a universal sign of unity. Six Philadelphians preserve circles in shellac, sink circles in concrete, use circles to represent the afterlife. It's the kind of exhibit where the wheel of life burns rubber and sticks in the sand.

Michelle Marcuse stretches circles into ovals on waxed, shaped Masonite mentalscapes. ''The New Weight,'' for example, is a T-shaped canvas with a shiny black seal that hinges the two blocks and a milky ring. Marcuse thoughtfully leaves her drawing exposed, declining to choke it with encaustic. The result is a skin-like relief that breathes.

Tremain Smith keeps circles in limbo under transparent, low-fired layers of oil, wax and collage. Some of these segmented panels resemble crazily registered prints; others resemble posters puckered with age. All have fine elemental reactions and a fascinating peek at the archaeology of art.

Curator Debra Miller, a professor of art history at Rutgers University, must like wax, for a third artist, Vincent Romaniello, contributes waxed oils on linen and birch panel. He offers pale views of vague skies, marked by watery dots and rusty sunspots. While the sandy textures are compelling, there's not enough contrast to justify six variations on a thin theme.

David Foss' messy, controlled abstract paintings are much juicier. In ''#7,'' metallic powder and amber shellac create a combustive cluster of saffron shooting stars. In ''#5,'' an amberized poppy form floats seductively near the center of a strikingly distressed silver field -- a sort of spray-painted cave wall.

Foss weakens his explosion/implosions with cartoonish black-gray bubbles. They reduce his graffiti fireworks to rough, square wallpaper samples.

Antonio Puri jumps circles through the most hoops. His ''#5'' is a mixed-media wall cloth starring splashy rings. It could be a target for pilots, or a board game for gods. ''Mitosis of the Soul'' is a huge mixed-media unframed canvas of a cell splitting to reveal a sphere. Speedy stripes and starry rain beads give it a nice galactic whoosh.

Puri toys with two types of shrine in ''Conversation with Pollock.'' Three scrolls, inspired by prayer flags at Tibetan temples, are covered in red/black/gray drips, inspired by Jackson Pollock's signature style. Circles near the top of the scrolls symbolize the pleasant afterlife of Pollock and other tortured souls. A table heaped with plastered string is a humorously burnt offering to anyone who dismisses Pollock's drip paintings as spaghetti.

The show's single sculptor, James Fuhrman, shapes space with welded-steel objects. Jagged bowls are enjoyably plastic. Stainless-steel rings submerged in concrete chunks nicely conjure an Irish ring fort. A half circle of miniature, sheared monuments works very well as a Zen garden.

An overabundance of Fuhrman pieces suggests a separate show, one more on the boundary of fine art and craft. The imbalance throws the circle concept for a loop.

''Inner Circles,'' through Feb. 29, Sharadin Art Gallery, Kutztown University, near West Main Street and College Boulevard, Kutztown. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, 2-4 p.m. Sunday. 610-683-4546, www.kutztown.edu/acad/artgallery.