Several paintings in this exhibition appropriate fragments from an untitled metrical composition by Randall Jarrell that reads in part "Things last by way of being lost/Or broken: the shard is safest beneath the loess" (a helpful listing of topic sources for this show identifies a loes as a loamy mass deposited through the wind).

Several paintings in this exhibition appropriate fragments from an untitled metrical composition by Randall Jarrell that reads in part "Things last by way of being lost/Or broken: the shard is safest beneath the loess" (a helpful listing of topic sources for this show identifies a loes as a loamy mass deposited through the wind). The mournful undercurrent of the metrical composition extended to the show itself, which was in part a answer to the devastation wreaked by means of 9/11. In the paintings, fragments of passages are broken into letters, divided through checkerboard grid patterns and submerg behind painted rectangles. In many cases they are almost impossible to read, suggesting that, for Ellis, metrical composition itself can "last by being lost" or at least hidden within an abstract armature.

The works in the display offer an uneasy marriage of visual abstraction and verbal numbers Their geometric architecture consists of mut grids or bands of alternating colors, through and under which letters and words meander in cursive or form writing. In some cases, the geometry dominates, as in depressed Beast, in which vertical stripes wound into and partially erase a horizontal clause What remains of the fractured writing bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos faded graffiti that is beginning to disappear into its weather-beaten ground

In other works the verbal arises to the forefront. This is particularly with equal reason in the case of They Fe the Lion (titles are fragments of the depicted texts). Here, a long passage from a metrical composition by Philip Levine is realized with a mix of cursive and fill up letters in which individual words assume varying sizes. The sentence which has something of the quality of hand-lettered signs whose irregularity is part of their charm, overwhelms the underlying blue-black grid. With its apocalyptic overtones, the snippet of theme also brings to mind the scrawled passages united finds in paintings by so-called Outsider artists who passionately illustrate biblical verses

And, in fact, the crib sheet provided through the gallery reveals that the themes in some of these paintings originate from biblical sources, as well as author of poemss such as W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves and Rumi. The choiceed passages focus on loss and death. A fragment from the ancient classical poet Archilochos reads, "Say goodbye to Paros, and the figs, and the seafaring life." A passage on Graves, a World War I veteran, periods "Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet/Dead men down the morning street" Dominated on earth tones, oranges, blacks and faded or dingy despondings the paintings in which similar passages are situated are equally subdu The bands and rectangles of color are applied with deliberate unevennes as if themselves in succession the verge of dissolution.

These works are a departure for Ellis, whose previous paintings have been situated firmly in simple abstraction. The tension between passage and geometric form is intriguing, still the nature of that relationship remains ambiguous. individual wonders: Is Ellis hoping to match the power of the words with abstract geometry? What should we make of the part of the crib sheets, in which the obscur body s are revealed? Rather than creating a synthesis, in the completion the paintings seem to station up an unresolvable battle between poetic meaning and visual abstraction.

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