View of Kendell Geer's exhibition "In the Flesh," showing AkropoUs Now, 2004,razor mesh, shelves, 9V, by 29'A by 1 'A feet; at Salon 94.

Kendeil Geers at Salon 94South African-born KendellGeers. widely known on the inter-national festival and gallery circuitfor sculpture and video installa-tions exploring themes of vio-lence, social justice and sexuality,had his first New York solo exhibi-tion in the ground-floor gallery ofSalon 94. The choioe of this ele-gant townhouse space gave theexhibition a relatively restrainedtone, especially in light of Geers'sreputation as a provocateur.Nonetheless, it brought homeissues of personal complicity andprivacy that he has presentedmore transgressively elsewhere.

The exhibition consisted of twosculptures and a series of draw-ings pinned to the walls. AkropolisNow (2004), nearly 30 feet longand 10 feet high, stretched acrossthe all-glass rear wall of thespace, not only dominating theroom but seeming, at first, a partof it. Constructed of 12 open steelrectangles, stacked in two tiers ofsix, each containing threeunwound rolls of razor mesh, thelacy, screenlike piece filtered thesouth sun and the tranquil back-yard garden in a very pretty way,contradicting the deadly politicalconnotations of the wire (a SouthAfrican invention. Geers's notestell us). The columns' intendedvisual reference to the Acropolisand. by extension, to the birth-place of Western democracywould not, perhaps, have beenobvious without the prompting ofthe Coppoiaesque title. With it,the piece became, among otherthings, a barbed, tightly coiled cri-tique of America's lost idealismand its present self-deluded, mili-taristic imperialism—a transparentfacade, indeed.

In that the large and impressiveAkropolis Now was mostly anopen composition, it made a

pointed contrast to the concen-trated density and tiny size of theshow's other sculpture. Potlatch(12 East 94th Street, New York),a white gold cast of Salon 94'sfront-door key. This innocuous-looking object, displayed in a vit-rine in the entrance hall, conjuredup the possibility of a violation ofthe space at least as real andscary as the holes Geers has onoccasion blasted through thewalls of other galleries.

In the first drawings that Geershas exhibited, images of theskeletal dome of the formerIndustrial Promotion Hall inHiroshima (now preserved as partof the Hiroshima Memorial PeacePark) are silhouetted in whiteagainst splashes of violentlythrown black ink. The iconicimage is defined and at the sametime confused by incompatiblevisual activity, not unlike the way,in earlier works. Geers wrapped acrucifix and other religious sym-bols in hazard-warning tape.Though the Ink splashes—spurtsof black blood—do not particular-ly resemble Jackson Pollock'sdrips (first essayed a year or twoafter the atom bomb wasdropped), they inevitably evokethem. They also bring to mind(and implicitly contradict)Pollock's 1951 statement, "Themodern painter cannot expressthis age, the airplane, the atombomb, the radio, in the old formsof the Renaissance or of anyother past culture. Each age findsits own technique."

—Nathan Keman

Jean Shin atFrederieke TaylorJean Shin has recently earned areputation for her transformativeinstallations that imbue castoffs ofour consumerist society with anew vitality. Several ambitious

installations (all 2004) engagingsculptural assemblage, architec-ture, painting and drawing werethe focus of the artist's first one-person exhibition at FrederiekeTaylor Gallery.

For a large installation titledHide, Shin dismantled hundreds ofdiscarded leather shoes and sort-ed, sewed and assembled theminto 13 sculptures that she sus-pended from the ceiling like flayedanimal pelts, using an intricatesystem of tied shoelaces. Walkingthrough the surreal forest of hang-ing "skins"—with their richly tex-tured surfaces penetrated byapertures of their unmaking, likefaces with their mouths wideopen—became a complex spatialexperience that invoked aspectsof both abstract painting andarchitecture. Wom, wrinkled, torn,faded and stained, the splayedshoes bore traces of their pasts inthe colors, grains, buckles, fringe,perforations, straps, patches,stitching and other intricate detail-ing. Through a labonous process,the animal hides had been initiallytransformed into functionalfootwear which, in turn, was recy-cled by the artist into a new entitythat retained and yet transmutedits lineage.

Another installation. Clothesline,employed a series of white but-ton-down shirts stripped down totheir mere seams. Strung acrossa corner of the gallery, the workproduced an evocative drawing oflinear shadows on the wall whiledeconstructing the uniformity ofcorporate dress.

From a distance, 20/20 appear-ed to be a beguiling cluster offloating, glistening objects. Uponcloser inspection, it revealed itself

to be an agglomeration of differ-ently shaped and colored pre-scription eyeglasses, inserted intoa thin wall buiit in front of a win-dow. Viewers could peer throughthe lenses onto the landscape ofurban architecture beyond, whichwas modified by the lenses invarious ways. Looking throughobjects once worn by variousanonymous individuals made theviewer conscious of the act ofseeing and the relativity of experi-ence. Here, as in much of herwork. Shin brings together dis-parate histories in order to setnew ones in motion.

—Susan Harris

Alexander Libermanat Ameringer & YoheWhile studying architecture andworking as a set designer in Parisin the 1930s. Alexander Liberman(1912-2000), who was born inKiev, joined the staff of Vu, one ofthe earliest magazines to incorpo-rate photographs. There hebegan a multipart career: as edi-tor and designer, photographerand painter. After moving to NewYork, he was appointed editorialdirector of Conde Nast—a posthe held for over 30 years.Liberman was deeply influencedby currents in modernist art inboth his own work as a painterand sculptor and in his commer-cial production.

Liberman played an importantrole in introducing avant-gardeart to mass audiences, commis-sioning Dali, Duchamp, Johnsand Rauschenberg, among oth-ers, in projects for Vogue and, ina more uncertain legacy, pio-neering the use of contemporary

Jean Shin: Hide, 2004. cut leather and suede, dimensions variable;at Frederieke Taylor.

Alexander Liberman: Diptych —Two Ways, 1950/200A, enamel on masonite,60 by 74% inches; at Ameringer & Yohe.

art in fashion shoots. Notions ofhigh and iow culture colored hiscritical reception as an artist, theinsinuation being that his day jobmust somehow contaminate hisart. Upon seeing his paintings,Diana Vreeland exclaimed, "OhAlex, they'd make such beautifulsweaters!"

This show re-created a 1960exhibition at Betty Parsons of 15of Liberman's paintings ot circles,a motif on which he had concen-trated almost exclusively for theprior decade. In early works, hemainly employed the circle geo-metrically, as figure againstground or as shape-defining neg-ative space. In Diptych—TwoWays (1950), a large (60 by 7474inches) enamel on masonite, twotall rectangles of equal size arebutted together. On the left, a redcircle sits on a white ground, whileon the right, the colors arereversed. Centered vertically, withspace above and below, the circlestouch the outside edges and brushup against each other in the mid-dle, appearing to conduct somesort of exchange. Here, as inmany similarly composed paint-ings, circles are endowed with bothvaguely transcendental intima-tions and a snappy, midcentury-modern design esthetic.

Painted in enamel, in somecases on aluminum, these workshave an industrial feel (Libermanacknowledged this to ThomasHess in 1974, comparing hiswhites to the coating of refrigera-tors). That and his hard-edge ren-derings have suggested a mini-malist sensibility avant la lettre.But Liberman's ambitions werelargely pictorial and formalist, ashe placed one element next to

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another in a flat, open field. Thereis also a hint of optical afterimageeffects.

Liberman exploits the universal-ity of the circle to endow his pure-ly abstract configurations withsuggestions of the actual world.An untitled oil on canvas of 1959shows just two black circles con-taining a few red and blue dots,but we can also see them asorganisms in petrl dishes or thedistant view through binoculars.Likewise, in three oils on canvas,each titled Yellow Continuum (all1958-59), we find the pared-downconfiguration of a single large yel-low circle and one or more smallblue and black ones marshaled todisparate associations: a tiatturntablelike disk, the pupil of aneye or planets in orbit around asun. —Jonathan Gilmore

Rachel Howardat the Bohen FoundationThe English painter RachelHoward's first American exhibi-tion, "Guilty." consisted of a setof large color photographs and aseries of 10-foot-high paintingstitled after the seven deadly sins:Lust, Avarice. Sloth, Gluttony,Anger. Pride and Envy. In the lit-erature that accompanies thework, Howard states that she hassubstituted her love of paintingfor the sinful passions referred toIn the work.

Howard spent over two yearson the deliriously elegant "Sin"series, within which there is onlyslight imagistic variation. All sevenpaintings contain a glowing yellowcross glimpsed through a curtainof vertical brushstrokes painted incrimson, maroon and burgundy,

colors Howard likens to "deadblood, expelled blood." Thepaintings are a big experience,with a cinematic punch. Lightintensity varies from the efful-gence of Avarice to the lugubri-ousness ot Pride.

Howard finishes the paintingsby applying many layers of acrylicgloss. This, in effect, distancesthe viewer from the works, unify-ing the material presence so thatthe paintings become pureimage. In Avarice, for example,the red draperylike strokes areslightly parted and much of thedeeply placed yellow lightstreams dramatically toward thefront surface, where it is haltedby the thick, clear aspic of theplastic medium.

The deep, glossy surfacescould be interpreted as Howard'sway of examining the distancebetween religious imageryand her professed atheism.Alternately, the slivers of lightcoming through the parted cur-tains could be taken as wounds,as in representations of Christthat depict light passing throughhis tortured body. Or Howardmight be casting herself as adoubting Thomas, the NewTestament apostle who neededto put his hand in Christ'spierced side in order to believe.

In comparison with the "Sin"paintings, Howard's C-prints onthe lower level of thetwo-story BohenFoundation spacewere comparativelyhumble, though at66'/̂ by 49 inchesstill large-scale.The effect was likeattending Low Massafter experiencingthe High-Mass pompof the paintings.This series of pho-tographed views.executed in France,is dominated bythe cross, thistime derived fromshadowy foregroundcrosspieces ofwindow frames.Where the paintingsplace the viewer out-side of a dramaticapparition, thephotographs impli-cate the viewer inan interior, wherethe gaze is brokenby cruciform silhou-ettes before reach-ing a distant, blurrylandscape or sky.

Seductive but baffling, this showseemed to be about smashingtogether religion's power of affir-mation and art's questioningstance in order to see what hap-pens. —Joe Fyfe

Harriet Kormanat Lennon, WeinbergIn her latest show, Harriet Kormancontinues in much the same veinas she has for the past few years,and. in fact, the earliest worksamong these 18 paintings andfour pastels date to 2001. There issomething delightfully stubbornabout this endeavor, in whichKorman conceives an allovercomposition of intersectingshapes and fills them in with solidcolors (a few are brushy, but mostare not). The forms are roughlygeometric, with edges that wobbleslightly—triangles, oblongs,squares and circles as well as themore complicated sections leftover in between. They are alwaysthe same scale in relation to theframe and to each other—not toobig. avoiding hierarchies, and nottoo small, eliminating the effect ofscenic distance. In some of theworks, a different color is assignedto every shape, but even wherecolors are occasionally repeated,there is everywhere the sense of acompulsion to ecumenically meteout hues. The result is cheerful, to

Rachel Howard: Gluttony. 2002-03. household glosson canvas, 10 by 7 feet; at the Bohen Foundation.