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.
One LES show not to be missed is the Pat Adams exhibition of paintings from the 1970s and 80s at Alexandre Gallery, up through April 16. Each painting is a meditative universe of cosmic realities and inner memories. With a process that included adding mica chips and drawing the most perfect curves that I suspect derive from mathematical equations (one definitely is the Golden Spiral), you'd think the paintings would feel stiff and self-conscious, but instead, they are explorations into an unconscious world of Zen-like presence. (Full disclosure: Pat was a friend of my mother's - I suspect they met at an art colony - but that friendship has in no way clouded my reverence for these paintings.) The photos in no way do justice to actual experience of the work.