New Exhibits Are Sensual, Haunting

Among those who make it a point to follow the regional art scene, painter Joseph Goldberg is much admired, if not as well-known as some think he ought to be.

Critics in the past, evaluating his spare, meditative, abstract paintings, have pronounced him spiritual heir to the Northwest mystics, meaning Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and their like-minded contemporaries. Goldberg's reclusive life in Soap Lake, where he has lived for some 14 years, adds to his mystique as an artist who draws on one vision of Northwestern landscape - in this case the dry hills and plains of Eastern Washington - to give form to subtle but complex meditations.

Twenty-two of Goldberg's newest paintings are on display starting at 5:30 p.m. today at Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery. It is a large show for the artist, who hasn't had a solo show in three years - and a particularly beautiful one. Goldberg works in encaustic, which is a many-centuries-old technique of mixing hot wax with pigment to create rich, fissured, varnished surfaces. He is known for his mastery of the process and the sensual surfaces he creates.

With names such as "Veil," "Blue Earth," "Winter Light," and "Snow Country," many of these luminous paintings were obviously inspired by Goldberg's Soap Lake environs. They are formalist and elegant in their

composition - each a rectangle, wedge or, generally, some other geometric shape centered on a field of pale color. The tones of

pigment melt gradually from one shade to another like the tones in a sun-parched landscape, but it's clear that these works are also about interior landscapes.

Another show causing a buzz this month is the the haunting, emotionally gripping, and original work of Nicolas Africano at Linda Farris Gallery.

Africano is primarily a painter who has made a career of creating introspective, almost classical figurative work often based on events from his life. He also paints portraits of people he knows. A resident of Normal, Ill., Africano's work is included in such important and major collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York.

His current show, called "Portraits of Rebecca," is a group of his characteristically pared-to-the-bone, nearly colorless portraits, showing his wife as a lone figure on a vacant, dream-like canvas. (There are also several small cast plaster sculptures of Rebecca that are lovely footnotes to the paintings.) The mood of this work is highly personal, intimate without being intrusive. Whether she is clothed or partly nude, Africano renders Rebecca with a lover's adoration and with great dignity. These works are love poems, no great surprise since Africano, who is in his 40s, originally studied to be a writer. Though he was not at last week's opening, Africano will be at the gallery for a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on May 26.

Glass artist Josiah McElheny is a Seattle resident and has been affiliated with Pilchuck Glass School. But there is little in his current show at Donald Young Gallery to suggest that he is related to the Seattle glass scene. Unlike his more artistically flamboyant colleagues, he makes simple, deceptively plain vials, flasks and beakers that are meant to look like Roman antiquities and which are presented as faux museum exhibits. His apparent aim is to force viewers to consider the history of glass as both a utilitarian and decorative material, and to question collectors' motives in demanding "original" antiques instead of beguiling fakes. Though the tactic of presenting contemporary art as historical artifact frequently is meant as little more than an amusing joke, this exhibit is more thoughtful.

Presented in museum display cases with official-looking information labels, the show at first glance looks like a display of old apothecary tubes and vials. But the appeal of it comes from reading the poetic labels and connecting the intentionally tragic and poignant stories McElheny weaves with the fragile, ordinary-looking glass vials. One flask is described as having been buried with a young woman who died at age 20. It "had held olive oil which her lover had used to wash her feet when she was alive."

A show not to be missed is the work of Philip Govedare at Francine Seders Gallery. A relatively new member of the art and painting faculty at the University of Washington, Govedare's first solo show at Francine Seders includes seven big, vigorous abstract oil paintings that fill the canvas with color, drama and enticing suggestion. Govedare spent time in Italy during the '80s, and the influence of the ages-old architecture and ancient frescoes is obvious in his work. There are hints of winding staircases, narrow roads, doorways, windows, shaded walls, split and peeling layers of paint. Govedare is a painter who likes paint, and knows how to use it.

The show also includes Govedare's mixed media works on paper, which, with their far more subtle palette of pale pinks and beige spaces veined with black, suggest pink marble through a macro lens. These smaller works literally pale next to the bigger, more complex oils, but are compelling in their own right.

Photography fans have two shows to see this month. At G. Gibson Gallery, California photographer Richard Misrach's show is called "Desert Canto XII: Clouds." For those familiar with Misrach's potent formula of color photography and sagebrush environmentalism, this show at first may initially seem altogether different. His large (40 inch by 50 inch) color prints are of clouds - plump white ones against blue skies, striated flame-colored ones, angry thunderheads. The clouds appear benign compared to his usual sinister desert landscapes ravaged by military arms testing and toxic leftovers. But the beauty of the clouds is, in some cases, a cosmetic hoax. Some are lovely because they were shot through dense smog, which can give sunsets a striated beauty. Other clouds reflect the roaring flames of forest fires. Though beautiful, these clouds are not pristine. In shooting them, Misrach remains an indignant commentator on environmental degradation.

Evocative, lyrical photography is on display at William Traver Gallery, where Seattle photographer Eduardo Calderon shows his black and white work from six months he spent in Paris in 1994 on a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Called "Recent Walks," the images, many of them with a somewhat surreal composition, were taken in city parks and on Paris streets. One of Calderon's talents is for catching people unposed, and these shots together are a quiet portrait of Paris going about its daily business, as well as Parisians during moments of private respite in public places.

Calderon is known in Seattle for shooting the work of other artists and for portraiture. (He photographed many of the jazz musicians in Paul de Barros' book on the jazz scene called "Jackson Street After Hours.") But he was trained as an anthropologist and has an anthropologist's eye for observing people and their habits.

If you haven't been to Paris in a while, this show will make you long for a trip to the City of Light.

At Mia Gallery, the traditional painting by Australian Aboriginal artists Willie Gudabi and his wife Moima is a stark counterpoint to the the work of young Seattle artist Friese Undine. Gudabi and his wife paint works that ritualistically describe their lives and their place in the universe. The work is packed with symbolic creatures, heroes, spirits and the humans in these big canvases are merely a part of the chain of life.

This non-western view of the individual's place in the universe is in sharp contrast to the highly personal and particular work of Undine, whose show of paintings, books and puppets invoking Sigmund Freud and Moses is an angst-filled commentary on his own upbringing and the abundant possibilites that life presents for cruelty and dissapointment.