The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
Tom Burckhardt at High Noon
2025.10.15
Walking into High Noon Gallery we see large, glowing – almost lyrical – paintings by Tom Burckhardt. But, as with much of Burckhardt’s work, first impressions give way to more complex responses, often refuting what we first felt. By using one complement color pair that morphs from pure hue through the grays and to the opposing pure hue, each painting radiates an inner light that shines out and invites us in. And as we walk in, we begin to see that the meticulously composed abstractions become representational – a 1950s Chevy, a mountain, the workings of an electronic motherboard – but then these references soon dissolve. Their solidity slips away, and we are left with feelings of unease and dislocation, with metaphors of the chaotic world we now exist in. Burckhardt seems interested in the illogical contradictions of our experience, expressed both formally and conceptually. His use of pareidolia – our tendency to find recognizable images in random patterns – gives comfort as it simultaneously creates disjunction, or the complementary color palettes that encompass the full spectrum with just two hues and create the glowing light, also suggest how polar opposites are needed for the whole. The perfectly designed forms become off-balanced as their jarring angles and shapes collide in distant space that also collapses into flat planes upfront. Even the exhibition title, FRESHF LOWERS, takes on multiple levels of innuendo. Inspired by a flower shop’s carelessly typeset awning title, the name suggests both the fresh lows our society has sunk to, and also the beauty of freshly cut flowers. Burckhardt was born into an artistic family, and though the influence of his father, the photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, who worked alongside NY’s Abstract Expressionists, and mother, painter Yvonne Jacquette, whose landscapes and cityscapes with unusual angles and viewpoints have their own sense of imbalance within balance, might lurk beneath the son’s work, Tom is his own person, with his own voice, a voice that juxtaposes abstraction, representation, concept, social commentary, humor and experimentation. His show runs through Oct. 25.