Myth and nature do the wild thing

BY JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT

If there’s one thing Rudolph Giuliani did right, it was castigate the Brooklyn Museum for showing Chris Ofili’s Madonna with dung. It made the British artist of Nigerian descent an overnight sensation. After an exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2005, the 38-year-old is back in a New York solo gallery show for the first time in twelve years. As Britain’s rep at the Venice Biennale (and a husband and new father) he’s been very busy anyway as this debut at David Zwirner’s shows. It’s the first exhibition to bring together Ofili’s painting, sculpture, printmaking and graphite drawing.

The long-awaited blockbuster filled two gallery spaces and a room between them. In a departure from his trademark use of dung as well as sequins, this show is pure, excluding mixed media. The results are a mature tour de force of color, line and figurative abstraction.

Mythic identities pose in pauses of fluidity as they appeal to us like sirens. Couples are caught in dances that celebrate eroticism. Long fronds place the action outside in a kind of Eden recalling Gauguin. Ofili’s broad, color-saturated sketches of fetching demi-gods furthers this association. Matisse and Picasso also rustle.

In “Confession (red)”, a nude female lies diagonally on a green hill. A mountain hulking under a purple sky silhouettes her profile. Ofili uses the abrozzo, or underpainting to great effect. He often swipes a slightly dry brush across the shaded surface allowing it to show through, adding depth and darkening the overlaying color.

Of several sculptures, the 84-inch-high bronze “Annunciation” is arguably the Pieta of our times. Two winged figures — a shiny, smooth female and a rough, black male — are perfectly bound in a hot embrace.

The title “Devil’s Pie” refers to singer/songwriter D’Angelo’s 1998 lyrical postulations on desire and redemption. In keeping with Ofili’s own allusions to scripture, many of the titles are Biblical characters. Does the title “Lazarus” have to do with the guy’s wang sticking straight up? True to form, Ofili continues to push the boundaries in his spiritual expressions of human nature.

Known for painstaking collage full of documents and fancifully painted, Carlos Vega breaks out in his fourth show at Jack Shainman. Here he includes straight painting on canvas with no additions and impressive etchings on lead plates.

The collages are winning with their mix of letters and ledger sheets, cut up books and diagrams. In “Just Looking III,” a la Goya, a giant sits on the horizon. Vega handsomely invests the composition with an old look, roughing it up with pencil smudges. In a skillful play on negative space, the notepaper lines interface with cut-out paper to form the figure.

The title piece “Pure Science” is spare. The Helvetica words cut from a textbook or magazine cross the bottom. Three triangles are skillfully splayed above like helicopter rotary blades or more ominously, a fallout shelter sign. Over this, Vega has drawn the side and front of an architectural eagle, providing an unfinished, hence private quality.

While the collages provide a sensuous subtext, Vega’s drawings on lead highlight his allegorical concerns. In a large triptych, we see an aquatic pastoral. Delightful figures of otters, dragonflies and irises emerge from a dark surface.

Black stars in the sky reflect in silver. In the center, a nymph’s face floats. Her hair spreads out mimicking the ripples. An orange beaver paddles along. Rust marks replace brushstrokes.

On the right side things start to get dicey. Some forms are less identifiable although we can delight in a blue fern and a green mushroom. A face with tears breaks the surface and below it another. The lower face is holding something in its mouth with a disturbing grid like a grenade.

Vega should keep exploring that dark side in order to fully balance those big lead sheets.