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ARTCAT



Paul Resika: Recent Paintings

Lori Bookstein Fine Art
138 Tenth Avenue, 212-750-0949
Chelsea
May 5 - June 5, 2010
Reception: Wednesday, May 5, 6 - 8 PM
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Lori Bookstein Fine Art is pleased to present its first one-person show of paintings by Paul Resika.

Painted over the last four years, Resika’s compositions are, as ever, a balancing act between the observed scenes of his surroundings and the fantastic – sometimes entirely fictional – motifs he reshapes them to be. The backdrops of Maine and Cape Cod may be familiar, but their level of abstraction will come as something of a surprise to viewers acquainted with the artist’s lush landscapes and seascapes of the 1980’s and 90’s.

Resika’s long-standing concern for captured light and his signature painterly strokes have become instruments of a growing linearity and geometry. Boat groups, which he had already pared down to simple arrangements of blocks and swishes, are reduced further to metonymic triangles. Sea and sky are turned into barely interrupted planes of color, while our traditional orientation towards space and depth is repeatedly uprooted. Two new motifs emerge in this body of work: the lighthouses of Maine and the tropical beaches of Jamaica. Despite such a disparity in mood and location, the alchemical transformation of Resika’s painting produces a strength and vitality which is independent from his original input.

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