Reviews

STEVEN ALEXANDER AT TEST PATTERN

by Jeff Boris

Upon viewing Steve Alexander's paintings at Test Pattern Gallery, the viewer is distanced from the act, held like the spotted patches of color one is seeing. Within this space a subtle dialogue emerges, slowly revealing a reserved sensibility.

The paintings are made up of large slabs of color that bisect the canvas. Alexander builds up these slabs layer by layer with each new layer of color reinforcing the one underneath. The results are diaphanous color shifts and fissures that reveal some of the history of the painting. Alexander is a subtle colorist with a palette that ranges from murky greys to muted ochres and reds and blues that are close to primary. The variation of surface effects, with small furrows and pockmarks accentuated by the cool flat surface, brings further nuance to the format.

Alexander has reduced painting to its most basic open-ended means. The canvas is a controlled experiment, an investigation of the possibilities engendered by piling acts upon acts. The logic may be taken for granted on first look, but upon further examination the paintings reveal a controlled balance between the organic process and linear elements. As in his earlier paintings these lines connect the beginning and end of each work delineating where the work has been. They also function to hold the weight of color, acting as points of reference among the topography. These relationships among color, balance, and linear elements accentuate the sophisticated simplicity in Alexander's work.

Electric City Renaissance, online review, June 2006

ALEXANDER'S ANDALUCIA IS WORTH EXPLORING

by Michael Barnes

The managers of Gremillion & Co. Gallery have developed a taste for largish, abstract paintings. Superior to the average samples are Steven Alexander's thick, cracked acrylics exhibited under the title "Andalucia".

Alexander, formerly of Austin but now based in the Northeast and a professor at Marywood University in Scranton, Pa., lays rifts of dark paint against lighter fields, then spackles these blunt patterns with intense colors. He cracks the surfaces with veins that look like eroded stone or, alternately, arid topography photographed from great height.

Glints of gold and ritual striations add a degree of mysticism. But the most memorable aspect of Alexander's paintings is his use of florid colors. In "Rosso Basso", his dominant hue is a saturated brownish red, affixed in big clumps. But he also dilutes the same color for attention-absorbing variations that bleed away from the main accumulations.

There is enough here to see. Where it leads is another story. The looking itself can brighten a rainy afternoon on the gallery trail.

Austin American Statesman, May 12, 2001