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.

Staney Lewis & Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham
2023.6.28
Well-curated two-artist exhibitions are treasures, as they can clarify the intentions of each artist, and suggest surprising similarities. The exhibition, “On-Site,” of observational landscape paintings by Rackstraw Downes and Stanley Lewis, hanging at Betty Cuningham Gallery through July 28 is just this type of two-person show. Though with both landscapists, differences abound -- Rackstraw, with his long horizontal canvases of meticulously seen perspective, often of about 180-degree views impress for their seeming illusionistic virtuosity; and Stanley, with his close-to-square formats of dense layers of paint and patches of added canvas depict a deep romantic expressionist, passionately searching for the essential experience of his world – but their similarities abound too. Both artists are acutely aware of the design of the picture surface (Rackstraw was an Abstract Expressionist in graduate school), both extensively use telephone poles and wires to activate the space above; both add extra canvas through the working process. But most interestingly, in their translations of three-dimensions on to two-dimensional surfaces, both artists articulate the phenomenological experience of time moving, of space shifting through the process of seeing, of the accumulations of multiple points of view, layered, and somehow made into a believable united gestalt of place through revision after revision. Rackstraw compiles multiple views as his head turns 180 degrees by manipulating perspective and adjusting the focus, and Stanley layers the accretion of tiny shifts of focus as his eyes meander through his motif, creating expressionist tension and energy, but ultimately, both artists are intensely concerned with the phenomenological experience of seeing through time.

Stanley Lewis

Stanley Lewis

detail of previous painting

Rackstraw Downes

Stanley Lewis

Rackstraw Downes

Stanley Lewis

Stanley Lewis

detail of previous painting

Rackstraw Downes

Stanley Lewis

Rackstraw Downes