Untitled #1783, 2009
Alfred Harris
Mixed media on paper, 17 1/2" x 25"
Photo: courtesy Froelick Gallery

Somewhere between the austerity of de Stijl, the wiry squiggles of Joan Miro, and the gestural abandon of Franz Kline lies the lineage of Alfred Harris, "New Paintings." In these self-assured works, the artist begins with rectangular planes of found papers, then overlays them with intricate curls and broad sweeps that betray a deft hand and free wrist. A winning integration of deliberation, nuance, and abandon characterizes these abstractions, which seem to grow organically from the picture plane, even as they hover and vibrate above it.

Some of the show's most striking works are large paintings on Braille magazine paper purchased from a second-hand store. After sanding the tops of the raised dots, Harris has applied red paint, undergirding black blocks of color and freewheeling forms with a subtle and conceptually rich foundation. It is, after all, brain twisting, if not perverse, to use Braille paper as a medium for chromatic and textural effects in a piece of visual art. Continuing this questioning of the role of sight in perception, Harris expands his visual vocabulary by cutting many of the papers up after he has painted on them, then reassembling them in configurations subtly askew from the forms they started out in. In works such as It Still Moves, he finishes the pieces with glassy resin, whose flawless, bubble-free surfaces owe their perfection to the artist's handiness with a blowtorch. In smaller works he deploys other found papers: graphing grids, sheets torn from notebooks, and heavy rag papers patched together in textural quilts. Painterly effects rule the day in Untitled #1781's stains and drips and The Wild Hunt's blocks of army green and luscious caramel, set off by dried-up ecru drips that look like residue from spilled milk. In Untitled #1783 and similar paintings, Harris has raked brown paint over white with a wide brush to simulate wood grain. His brushstrokes range from fat to pencil-thin, as in the manner of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. Although sliced, diced, and reassembled, the compositions come across not as fussy but as spontaneous, with monolithic chunks of color grounding cheeky arcs and splatters. In Harris' hands, the dynamic tensions between gravity and levity, construction and improvisation, seems utterly sincere and never less than jubilant.