| Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 March 2006 |
Two fine painters, one show A two-person show in which both artists shine shouldn't be a
rare occurrence. But it too often is, which makes the current Gallery
Joe exhibition pairing the works of Nicole Phungrasamee Fein and
Charles Ritchie an unexpected treat. Seeing Fein's and Ritchie's small but otherwise entirely
unrelated watercolor pieces was a little like going to an ice-cream
shop on a hot July day and trying to choose between such distinctive
and likely competing flavors as peppermint stick and mango. In this
particular case - art being ice cream - choice was not an option. I'd
have ordered a scoop of each on one cone. Fein's watercolor paintings do, in fact, have something in
common with ice cream. Her colors, like De Kooning's or those of the
Washington Color School painter Gene Davis, are coffee, lemon, peach,
strawberry, pistachio, and boysenberry, among others. And her
arrangements of those hues into stripe paintings - she also paints grid
patterns - suggest miniature horizontal versions of Davis' vertical
stripe paintings. That other horizontal stripe painter, Agnes Martin,
comes to mind, too. Both are superficial resemblances, though. Fein's practice of
using the same pool of water to mix her paints - making each of her
colors unrepeatable and unique - makes this work unpredictable and very
much her own. Ritchie's watercolors of nocturnal scenes in and around his
Maryland home are spellbinding, not least because they were all painted
at the same table in the same room of his house, and are all composed
of tones of black and white, yet manage to be strikingly different from
one another. For example, there are paintings from two separate suites of
self-portraits here, each individual work depicting Ritchie's
self-portrait as reflected in a window, but some of these portraits are
as easy to recognize as others are difficult. I found myself lingering
in front of several of his self-portrait paintings waiting for the
image of his face to coalesce, which it eventually did, but never in
the way I'd anticipated it would. Ritchie's paintings of straight and reflected images of the
interior and exterior of his house often seem like composites of views,
which I suppose, in effect, they are. The newest body of work in his
show, a series called "Pages," juxtaposes Ritchie's tiny, almost
indecipherable writing describing his experiences and dreams with
images of his table at the window. These minute intimate pieces, though
less photographic-looking than his other work, are reminiscent of
trompe l'oeil painting. Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St., noon to 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Through March 25. © The Philadelphia Inquirer return to home page |