There’s nothing quite as pleasurable as walking into a show of painting that is exceptionally good. It feels like a horrible pressure has been lifted and we can see clearly, like the rain has gone… Such was the feeling when we went to see Maria Cruz and Sally Ross’s shows at Kaliman Gallery.
In the front room is Ross who has managed to squeeze in 15 paintings and probably as many drawings. Executed with ballpoint pen, painted with obsessive dots and lines, the images are a crazy concoction of still lives, alpine views, portraits, insects, plants and Viking boats. It’s a fine collection of work that has a refreshingly ambiguous aesthetic bent – one portrait reminded us of either Florien or Rolf from Kraftwerk, another was reminiscent of European landscapes in Hungarian cartoons, one could be the cover of a Stereolab album, yet another of a church steeple in a village made us wonder if the painting’s weren’t the work of an ‘outsider’ artist.
We love it when a painter drops you into uncertain territory, where all reference points are speculative and you’re left to your own associative devices. Just as the world is being over taken by photography, something as beguilingly simple as Ross’s work comes along and reminds you of the power of painting. It also reminds us, that like punk, there is something possible in the simplest of combinations. We cannot recommend this show highly enough.
In the big room is the work of Maria Cruz, who has managed to find a life raft after the sinking of Sarah Cottier Gallery and join up with Kaliman. We are also immensely relieved to report that Cruz has given up on her Yoko Ono obsession of a few years ago and appears to be doing something that is all her own work. Called Nothing In This World, the paintings are semi-abstract landscapes that have forsaken text for soothing pastoral views, forests and green swathes of colour that could equally be oceans or trees. There’s a self portrait and another work with text that says NO SMOKING in gothic copperplate that reminds you that the classical landscapes of Casper David Friedrich can be despoiled by thoughtless butt throwers, or perhaps that nature is a conceptual figment. Cruz is one of those artists whose work makes you just not quite sure what the devil is going on, but is so persuasive you don’t really care.
