Raja (015678)
2009
Ron Ehrlich
Oil & mixed media on panel, 36" x 36"
Photo: courtesy LewAllen Galleries

Ron Ehrlich's energetically colored oil and mixed-media paintings are far from chromophobic, and make good use of white with all its concatenation of hue. The exhibition opens with the large diptych Whisper to the Wind (2010), which drips a span of white down into a very red bottom edge. One quick glance around the gallery confirms that this is a show of abstract expressionism, redux, and very well done. There is a satisfactory amount of dripping and splattering, and applied paint, presumably by the brush and palette knife, with mixed-media objects lurking cement-like under these richly painted surfaces. It's all terribly expressionistic in the most expansive sense of that word: what they express is completely up to the viewer.

For Ehrlich, the finished product is not so much about the surface as it is about building up the canvas with paint and other materials. Knowing this, the fact that Ehrlich studied classical pottery-making in Japan for five years comes as no surprise, but rather an explanation. (It's also pertinent to know that, after his studies in Japan, Ehrlich attended the Rhode Island School of Design.) Raja is very controlled without being overly tight. With the like-minded Tibet II, the implication is that Asia has persuaded Ehrlich to decelerate all that Action, and like a yogi, use the discipline that comes with years of practice to perform amazing feats of awareness.

The two paintings are attractive for that reason: they are quieter than most of the others. An encaustic-like treatment with helps smooth, literally, the active surfaces. In Raja, its background of white pushes itself down to tomato reds, while a line of yellowed orange forms an incomplete sideways triangle. Splatters of white against indigo, navy, and black bring the eye to the right-hand juncture of the triangle in that lower corner of the canvas. A rich undercurrent of greens suggests an ocean crashing against a shore of Martian-red sand.

Chelsea brings up Manhattan, of course, and the denizens of the Cedar Tavern in the days of the New York School. The references are successful without being derivative. A diptych, it's almost as if Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning are facing one another in a paint-off, each on his side of the canvas. We, the viewers, are the winners in this contest.