Messages - Overt, Covert

Messages - Overt, Covert: Bill Pangburn, Jose Camacho, Renee Magnanti

Oct / 30 - Nov / 30, 2024

Paris Koh Fine Arts

201 Bridge Plaza North, Suite 1, Fort Lee, NJ 07024

pariskohfinearts.com

By Jonathan Goodman

Paris Koh, the intrepid gallerist, opened her space in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a few years ago where she currently presents fine art shows, combining Korean and global artists. The current exhibition, called “Messages—Overt, Covert,” has been organized by the well-known curator Thalia Vrachopoulos,who is devoted to the visual relations shared by three artists who are particularly good in creating abstract imagery. Jose Camacho uses phrases and single letters in Spanish to examine issues of colonialism. Renee Magnanti’s slightly larger, more complex efforts, commanding in their acuity of style, are often based on ethnic patterns while treating themes of neglected women scientists. Bill Pangburn’s miniature momo-prints employ wavy line to convey water streams as seen from above in his native Texas panhandle. Given the recent global water scarcity but also the flooding disasters, his work quite subtly addresses the problem. These three artists’ symbolic and stylistic relationship, which does in fact exist among them, joins in differing but also connected idioms that serve abstract and improvised communications.

Installation view ⓒ Paris Koh Fine Arts

The formal differences among these artists’ works are not so extreme, especially in the poetic expressionism we see in the art of Magnanti and Pangburn who have been married for a long time. Yet, despite the closeness of their relations, they use different subjects, styles, tools and materials. So despite some affinities between the two, their art does not bring up a strong feeling of collaboration but nevertheless looks well together. Indeed, a large body of the work in the exhibition tends toward rhythmic linearities, which suggest a regularity of form given the “messages” subject. While Pangburn’s and Magnanti’s works demonstrate a penchant for lyric expressiveness, Camacho’s texts are more grounded in right angles. Size is a factor in this show, Pangburn’s efforts are particularly small, as happens also in Magnanti’s delicate pieces. The patterns and intricacies belonging to Maganti and Pangburn occur most effectively when they suggest the exuberant tradition of the New York School.

Left: Jose Camacho, Babel. 2023, Collage, enamel, acrylic on board mounted on canvas. 32 x 27 1/2 in. ⓒ Jose Camacho Right: Installation view ⓒ Paris Koh Fine Arts

Camacho, the third artist featured in the exhibit, lives in Montclair, New Jersey. His painted manuscripts often oriented toward maps and charts are taken with a grid-like regularity. His imagery looks like words used in a musical sense–much like notes on staves. So the letters and words, meaningful in a literary sense, initially, lose that content in favor of an abstract reading. Inevitably, it is difficult to read Camacho’s covert signs in the literal sense of the word, whose forms thus are emphasized, as opposed to their literary content. But it doesn’t matter terribly that we find it difficult to put together the letters in the text. Camacho’s presentation in the work called Babel (2023), shows a broad tower of letters that take up the greatest part of the composition.

Jose Camacho, Untitled: Number 45 & 46. 2013-2018, Oil, enamel acrylic on mat board mounted on plywood., 29 1/2 x 34 in. ⓒ Paris Koh Fine Arts

The letters sometimes are isolated, distanced from each other by blank squares or nonsense words, with the letters arranged in rows. What results is an inspired palimpsest in which repetition of imagery free of meaning outside of their shape. Camacho’s works are beautiful containing impactful meaning but not easily discernible. This happens in his work Babel that reminds us of the biblical story, of the tower’s construction that was stopped because of language differences among those building it. The work is then a fine example of a picture illustrating a theme of importance, even if the implications are troublesome.

Left: Bill Pangburn, Freeflow Gold, 2024, copperplate engraving with gold leaf, 3 x 2 in ⓒ Bill Pangburn Right: Installation view of Bill Pangburn's work ⓒ Paris Koh Fine Arts

Pangburn’s unusually small copper-plate engravings, embellished by silver or gold leaf, are a tour de force—not of miniaturization, but rather something very different: the containment of what seems to be an expansive space within the sharply constricted composition. In one particularly fine example of the artist’s craft using copper-plate design, the image consists of thin lines that twist and turn within the limited space of the work, which is 16x8 inches long. They pass over shard-like forms whose shape could easily remind the viewer of water. It is a drawing notable for its esthetic constancy, as well as being slightly whimsical due to the charm of the twisting wavy lines. Many of Pangburn’s works very well address the lyric figures that are found regularly in his effects.

Left: Renee Magnanti, Untitled in Blue and Gold, 2020,intaglio with weaving - metallic, 24K gold, and paper thread, 16 x 8 in. ⓒ Renee Magnanti

Magnanti, who has often worked with textiles for her patterns and designs, has two tall, thin cross-like constructions; this work relates well visually to her husband’s. There is no copying between the couple, but the two share the idea of pushing abstract imagery into small paper spaces. The small designs we see in the pictures make excellent use of spatial constraint. So Magnanti offers a highly textured vertical, made of dense, sharply repetitive patterns that create independent visual constructions despite the fact they are literally next to each other. The main vertical stripe consists of a fairly broad black field on top of which white curlicues of varying thicknesses play out emblematic visual motifs. The shapes and resultant pattern might well come from the Middle Ages illuminated manuscripts. On either side of the work there are a series of bright squares containing the larger image, as well a dense vertical stripe of highly textured graphite next to it. Above and below, the work presents broad stripes elaborated by abstract patterns, and at either end a longish frieze appears. The image works startlingly well in its use of texture—drawn texture, clearly, not the actual surface of cotton or wool. Magnanti, always very strong at transforming decorative and embellished effects into something larger than mere iteration, is particularly gifted in this nearly alchemically changed picture. She is better than most at transforming a surface into a presentation of depth, even if we know from the beginning that the image remains almost entirely flat.

Vrachopoulos, a curator noted for her interest in foreign cultures—Korea and Greece especially—also knows the American abstract and pattern tradition very well. Her understanding in this show has led her to find common threads among the three artists; namely, a disposition in favor of abstraction that may well suggest formal leanings, for example, Camacho’s letters that send powerful messages about parity, Pangburn’s linear effects, in their likeness to ripples of water and Magnanti’s treatment of women’s issues, are all to be commended—quite highly, in this very meaningful and attractive show.

Jonathan Goodman

Jonathan Goodman is an art writer based in New York. For more than thirty years he has written about contemporary art–for such publications as Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, Whitehot Magazine, Sculpture, and fronterad (an Internet publication based in Madrid). He currently teaches contemporary art writing and thesis essay writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Chief Editor: Paris Koh