HUGH KEPETS . FISCHBACH GALLERY
What is most striking about Hugh Kepets’ new paintings is his insistence on the ambiguity of architectural spaces rendered with total precision. Kepets takes a particular set of close-up details and subjects them to a thorough study. Painted with careful highlight and shadow, each area should be molded into deep three-dimensional space, but isn’t. By slicing off only close-ups and details of architectural scenes, Kepets focuses our attention on the intricacies of each object, yet again and again does his best to disguise as much as to define them. While it would be a mistake to limit the effect of his pieces to any one concern (color, composition or space) it would also seem a disservice to generalize about them as a whole. Conveying three distinct kinds of information in a deceptively straightforward way keeps his work constantly intriguing. Rather than dismissing the paintings as appealing geometric abstractions, he forces an appreciation of their content. He is clearly in control of an immense amount of visual information. ~ Deborah Perlberg |
Kepets’s abstract interests are evinced by the way that some of the paintings feature the same view done twice in different, carefully chosen color schemes. Great attention is paid to the shadow patterns on the walls of the buildings. They seem an almost obsessive extension of the architect’s treatment, and flatten out as the eye attaches their patterns to the outlines of the fire escapes in a single grid work.
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