April 1, 2012
THE HUFF POST ARTS
YVETTE GELLIS, Sylmar, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 108 x 168
inches
WHAT:
427
North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills
Through
Aug. 27.
HAIKU
REVIEW: Yvette
Gellis determines an unsettling condition in her paintings, one in which a
clearly urban environment becomes so taken up by its own dynamism that it
begins to disintegrate. Perceived space warps in and out, elements of architecture
and function become vehicles for disorientation, and the world becomes a fever
dream at once exhilarating and frightening, a continual cascade through light,
paint, and maddeningly familiar but never clear form. Dependent on the
brushstroke, on purely structural terms Gellis' work is almost abstract
expressionist; lord knows there are enough passages of pure painterly
virtuosity. But the representational - specifically urban - references are so
insistent, and the rendition of depth so convincingly vertigo-inducing, that
it's impossible to describe these often huge canvases as "abstract"
at all. Whatever else they are, they are quite a ride - and not only for the
eyes.
-Peter
Frank