Jadite Galleries 528 West 47th Street (10th-11th ave) June 3–June 19, 2010 Opening Reception: Thursday, June 3, 6–8 pm Gallery Hours: Mon–Sat, 12–6 pm by appointment only 212-977-6190
secret #18	secret #25	secret #20
Less Becomes More in the Small Paintings of Stephen Cimini A review by Ed McCormack After decades of huge canvases in the wake of the Abstract Expressionist era, in many cases size came to lose all relation to scale and seem meaningless—except, perhaps, as an indicator of overblown ambition—and contemporary artists began to rediscover the joys of intimacy. Although Stephen Cimini, who was recently awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, can still work fairly large and invariably make size truly matter as an integral element of the composition, his recent decision to paint a series of 6 x 6 x 1.5 inch canvases to accommodate the relatively modest space of Jadite Galleries’ new exhibition annex, at 528 West 47th Street, has produced especially auspicious results. Entitled “Secrets in Nature: a small study installation,” the show opens with a reception from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, June 3, and will run through the 19th. Since the 40 paintings in oil, wax medium, and marble dust on canvas that comprise the show are geometric abstractions, containing no natural imagery, the title resulted instead from the artist having wondered,“How many of these do I have to do before I start repeating myself ?” Like individual snowflakes or leaves on a tree, the number turned out to be infinite in its variety. But from this viewers’ perspective, even more impressive is the sense of spaciousness and scale that Cimini is able to project into a format that measures half a square foot. For unlike artists who in the manner of Indian miniaturists conceive of small formats as little “theaters” for narrative imagery, these works address the same issues relating to form, color, texture, the sanctity of the modernist picture plane, and the inherent “objectness” of the artwork as Cimini’s larger canvases. And although it seems entirely conceivable that Cimini may yet employ similar motifs in some of his larger canvases, one would have to quibble with calling these small paintings “studies.” For each is a full realized work in its own right, to which compression contributes its own special attributes, drawing the viewer even closer to savor the exquisite tensions between geometric austerity and coloristic sumptuousness and tactility inherent to the artist’s entire oeuvre. In secret #1, for example, roughly rectangular areas of muted red, burnished orange, vibrant blue, and pale, milky yellow scumbled and flecked with other, subtly variegated hues, converge around a fleshy pink square at the center of the composition. The cumulative effect is startlingly sensuous in a way that one might never have imagined geometric painting could be. By contrast, secret #18 is all cool blue and emerald green hues that shimmer like the icy surface of a peculiar flavor of sorbet, while secret #28 presents a tonally subdued yet chromatically simmering configuration of overlapping rectangular shapes in golden oranges and yellow ochres that infuse the entire canvas with a warm glow. After unveiling his “Ghost Series” earlier this year, in which he pared down his palette to pale, pastel monochromes in order to focus attention on the seductive textural effects and soft patina he achieves with his mixture of wax and marble dust, as well as the stately linearity, derived from urban architecture, that serves as a formal armature for all of his compositions, Stephen Cimini has returned to color with a vengeance. If anything, the modest scale of the works in this exhibition at the Jadite annex intensifies, rather than diminishing, the sense of chromatic saturation that lends his work such sensory impact. Here, as with the aforementioned “Ghost Series,” Cimini once again gains our attention and wins our admiration by virtue of various types of reductiveness, decisively demonstrating the durable old saw that less can be more. Don’t imagine for a minute, however, that Cimini has finally settled on a predictable métier; for it is his restless spirit of experimentation that makes him capable of surprising us (and most likely himself as well ) again and again. Indeed, at a juncture in art history when some advocates of newer media are all too willing to dismiss abstract painting—and painting in general for that matter— as anachronistic, it is his unpredictability which sets Stephen Cimini apart as an artist with whom even the most adamant nay sayers must reckon. — Ed McCormack Gallery & Studio

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