Press & Media

“Notebook: Formalisms”, The New Orleans Art Review

As a primary and collective ethos, postmodernism probably no longer exists. Too many years have passed. And yet, as sheer effect, it seems absolutely pervasive —and interminable. A movement that was, at once, soundly intellectual and blithely reactionary, now proceeds rutterless.

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“Art with a Smile”, Mobile Register

At first glance the room seems cluttered with wildly disparate icons, the detritus of western culture: ceramic pencils, mirrors, piano keys, floppy disks, dollar bills, musical notes, hamburgers, coffee cups, religous symbols.

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“Al Souza”, Art Papers

By Paul Ryan, ART PAPERS Staunton, Virginia Al Souza’s puzzle “paintings” (Reynolds Gallery, July 10—August 24) are actually assemblages that he constructs from multiple, found jigsaw puzzles. Yet, within the… 

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“Al Souza,” Art Papers Magazine

Al Souza’s puzzle “paintings” (Reynolds Gallery, July 10—August 24) are actually assemblages that he constructs from multiple, found jigsaw puzzles. Yet, within the blurred boundaries and permissiveness of our post-painting era, and particularly through the work’s smart (and sometimes accidental) links to various strains of modernist painting, “painting” is an appropriate and perhaps more accurate description. With the exception of two small-scale works each painting in the exhibition, like the startling 18-foot-long The Peaceful Kingdom that was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, consists of thousands of related and unrelated puzzle pieces that are assembled and glued together. Obsessive constructions consisting of multiple images, the paintings are object like, turgid oceans possessing islands and partial continents of the pictorial. The rippling, unified space of each composition announces an image-based theme—pop stars, museum masterpieces, cartoon celebrities, the terrain of fast food packaging, postcard landscapes; and, Souza’s playful/critical aestheticization of the material excesses of late capitalism provides conceptual drive.

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“Jim Richard at Arthur Roger”, Art in America

Jim Richard forces together elements of visual culture that are rich in connotations of social hierarchy and the diversity of taste. His paintings are like American food: flat, rich, irradiated and filled with chemical additives.

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