A Closer Look

Damian Loeb

Mary Boone Gallery

By LEE KLEIN

This modest suite of five paintings is presented somewhat like segments in an I.Q. test storyboard. Therefore, some viewers get the story right, and some over imaginative observers, like this writer, might read in story lines that are not there.

The first work in the set, Notice (School is Closed), suggests a sexually provocative Lolita, using the allegorical imagery of fences and the blatant words of signs to denote the illegality of underage sex. No matter, in the second canvas, Deep South, the young Miss is ablaze in her red negligee against the twilight. The thin paint on the canvas ­ a trademark of this young painter's work ­ renders the poetics of twilight most lush. The gorgeous effects include dusk's arrival, seen through the gaps in the trees, a rooster weather vane in full shadow and neon aglow. The neon is especially well rendered here, as the thin paint allows for the liquidity of this inert gas to mix gently with the hues of the sky.

The third and fourth works, Roseville and Fishsticks, suggest a continuation of the narrative. In Roseville, we see a girl, dressed in front of a road-side cottage. From our perspective ­ looking out the windshield of a parked car ­ we can also see, in the car's rearview mirror, the open road. This information would seem to suggest that the girl, and perhaps an unseen partner, may be on the run. In Fishsticks, we are shown presumably the same girl in a kitchen, standing with her hands placed assertively on her hips, naked, while her fully clothed companion stares resolutely into an opened refrigerator. This is the last we see of this girl (alive) in the series.

To assert that one can "stop anytime", as in the show's title I Can Stop (Anytime), is to tap into a loaded phrase. The final painting in this series, called Stop (Anytime), makes ample use of all possible underlying references.

This work depicts an intersection, whose sign-posts announce different traffic instructions, including "stop" and "anytime". At one corner of the intersection lies a dead dog, blending in with the road-side sand, just short of a patch of grass; a theme not too distant from Richard Misrach. To the canine's left, we see the sprawled legs of what appears to be a girl's lifeless body, clad in white pumps and a Burberrys skirt. The same red wrap which accompanied the negligee in Deep South rests on a nearby fence.

Mr. Loeb's titling of this show ­ with the unexplained use of the first-person singular "I" as the operative word ­ also offers room here for interpretation. Perhaps this furtive art world superstar, whose prices have purportedly doubled in the past year, is alluding to his having made a killing, while ominously noting "I Can Stop Anytime".