BY REBECCA LEE REYNOLDS

“LOUISIANA CONTEMPORARY 2016”
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
New Orleans, LA

Luis Cruz Azaceta, Heroes Tale, 2016

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In the main gallery, painting takes over, with pride of place reserved for two large abstract paintings by Luis Cruz Azaceta. Viewers are immediately drawn to the bright neon rainbow colors of Heroes Tale (2016), awarded Best in Show by juror Bill Arning, Director of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The painting almost dances with a syncopated rhythm created by a series of interlocking vertical pieces, some of them falling on a slight diagonal. A bright red piece in the upper right keeps the slivers in place, while the lines of the surrounding shapes are so crisply drawn that they recall architectural diagrams. Each of Azaceta’s paintings is a square composition made up of four panels that bring together fragments of a shape. In Green Square (Cairo) (2015), the main shape is a pale blue and green with random black dots and drippy red and white lines. A square shape in the lower left tilts against the stable edge of the panel, and in the upper left, a grouping of brightly colored slivers creates tension with the otherwise open space. Here the negative space dominates, offsetting its companion, Heroes Tale.