ARTnews: December, 2005

Review by Gerald Haggerty

 

Ken Kewley

Lori Bookstein Fine Art

Ken Kewley's precise paper collages                           

reconstructed familiar motifs - clothed                   

figures, nudes, towns and cityscapes, as                

well as variations on famous paintings -                           

and made them look new.  Regardless of                                         

its subject matter, each of them com-

pressed the larger world into a beguiling

little picture cut and faceted like a jewel.

 

Many works were no bigger than a few

inches across, but up close they filled

one's field of vision, revealing miniature

worlds built from snippets of colored

paper. Kewley culls his palette from the

pages of magazines - art magazines in

particular - and in the 2 1/4 inch square

View Out Back, Easton (2003), faint

mirror images of the words could be made

out on an ochre wall behind a barn-red

building.  The  convincing swirl of crimson

drapery around the figure of the sword-

wielding biblical heroine in Judith with the

Head of Holofernes (after Giorgione), 2005,

is actually composed of tiny slices of red

pink paper.  In a half dozen versions of

Renoir's bathers, the artist transformed the

nudes' voluptuous curves into planar

geometry that made one wonder what might

have happened if the great Impressionist

had been a Cubist.

 

Kewley's finished gems reveal the often

overlooked truth that all picture making is

an act of construction.  This is no small

accomplishment.

                                        - Gerald Haggerty