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.
Two LES exhibitions, sculpture by Mark LaRiviere and paintings by Thaddeus Raddel, showcase work that delves deep into the elusive soul of humanity. Mark LaRiviere’s heads and figures stare back and through us from an inner space of individual yet also universal personal dialogues, sending messages of unknown sensations made known through the intensity of the gaze, the contorted pose of the bodies and the sheer belief in his emotions that flows seamlessly from within Mark and into his work. Made from his imagination but informed by his daily practice of drawing self-portraits and carefully looking out at the world, the pieces at Equity Gallery, up through Sept. 27, are made of glazed ceramic and bronze, often patinaed in experimental ways – for instance with layers of milk fired on the clay. These are works that suck you in and hold you in as they resonate with the lived life of each figure, their suffering from society’s inequities and from personal trauma, but also an endurance and determination to continue despite it all. Up at Steven S. Powers/Joshua Lowenfels Gallery through Oct. 11, the paintings of Thaddeus Radell delve into our collective souls in quite different ways. Thaddeus applies oil paint in thick globs, creating almost sculpted reliefs of encrusted memories and other worldly mysteries. He can rework paintings for years, transforming once-finished paintings into new layers of experience, and in this exhibition we see some of the poignant heads from his 2024 Bowery Gallery show now obscured under the weight of new paint, new questions and new form. We also see tall, transcendent vertical burlap hangings of single figures ensconced in a numinous light, suggesting the hypnotic power of ancient Fayum funerary portraits or Medieval frescoes of spirits emerging from the abys of lost time. But contemporary existential existence also lurks beneath the surface of these figures, silently asking Thaddeus and us what they actually represent. Are they our defenseless immigrants, our homeless beggars, our cloud of environmental chaos and political implosion, the eternal human condition?
@markdavidlariviere @thaddeusradell @stevenspowers @equitygallery