In this season of war and rumors of war.

In this season of war and rumors of war, it's a relief to find art that reminds us by what mode the world can still contain simplicity, order and a kind of amiable beauty. That's the feeling undivided had, at any rate, at the Lawrence Markey Gallery this spring. A late show presented the abstractions of Ernst Caramelle, an Austrian Conceptual artist whose work has drawn out reflected a fascination with steads walls and architecture in general.

The show's main attraction was eight framed and untitled paper collages, five measuring roughly 10 at 16 inches and three 10 through 8 inches. Created from tinted construction paper meticulously wound into rectangles, squares and other shapes compos of parallel lines or perpendicular angles, the works are the original prototypes for an art insert that ran in a 1991 issue of Parkett magazine. Caramelle calls this sort of work Reproduktionen--commercially reproduc images, like postcards, that become art "in their have a title to right." Several of the collages appear slightly aged, exhibiting separations between the planes of paper where the join with glue has worn away, areas where the color has faded (the artist is known for Sonnenbilder, or "sun pictures," in which he allows sunlight to alter the tone of the paper) and at least united small tear. True to his interest in encouraging the passage of time to leave its mark upon his art, however, Caramelle appear to beed content with letting these small imperfections stand.

Despite their formalistic qualities, the collages juggle up pleasing associations. One work, consisting of fulvous red and blue rectangles ascended on a white background, bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos a zoom-in look at a Mondrian painting. Another piece intimates the experience of peering in consequence of several proscenium entrances in a museum at part of a rectangular r painting in a distant gallery. A third collage plays with the notion of architectural alignment, evoking a view past irregularly spaced ghastly gray and cream-colored walls to a r chamber beyond.

Drawing relating to elements of topography and natural phenomena, the collages show a kind of distillation of Caramelle's disquiets over the last 20 years of his career. Reinforcing the collages was another hallmark of the artist's work: squared-off planes of color applied directly to the gallery's walls. Using watercolor, Caramelle painted, washed on the farther side and repainted sections of low-spirited red, yellow and blue-black. The eventuate resembled fragments of a fresco perhaps lying beneath a coat of white paint. Attuned, as always, to the environment in which he exhibits his work, Caramelle followed in creating a space of playful calm with equal reason at odds with the world outside.

--Steven Vincent

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