Lines, loops and other geometric forms define the sleek sculptural paintings in “Proximities.” Machine-like precision unifies the styles of Michael Scott, Blair Thurman and the Swiss-born Olivier Mosset, who all maintain studios in New York. Yet there’s a whimsical quality to some of the works in this show at Pazo Fine Art’s Kensington location.
Mosset applies color-shifting paint to aluminum panels, which are often cut into bars, stars or semicircles. Each glimmering artwork juxtaposes two pieces in contrasting shapes and, usually, hues. The combinations suggest flags but also highly simplified landscapes. Three pictures have low horizontal bars that might represent a slice of earth or sea.
Parallel horizontal lines, often white on black, characterize Scott’s work. They are made with enamel paint on upright aluminum panels, most of them narrow. The artist sometimes varies his formula, if only slightly, by adding color or by breaking the lines into columns of segments that remain parallel but are vertically unaligned.
On close inspection, Scott’s lines reveal their handmade character. In his “Roundtrip,” Thurman goes further, messing with exactitude by leaving sections of concentric red circles partly or entirely unpainted. Yet his rounded canvases are flawlessly shaped, and the details are usually rendered as meticulously as the silver surface of the playfully titled “8-Track Painting.” Like his cohorts, Thurman takes inspiration from the inadvertent beauty of industrial objects.
