Page 91 - Studio International - May June 1975

painting, or whether it is organized works, which are not into mere prettiness. Although before being cut and collaged
compressed into a laboured confused by a medley of his work is pleasant enough it has into angular candy-hued shapes.
cliché without releasing its contradictory linear elements. no real impact, because it is In the two most interesting
energy. Here the vitality is The most attractive paintings are apparent that there is no paintings he makes use of a
pervasive and outward, especially those in which the colour range is conceptual density behind the peculiar technique, by which the
in the two 84 inch Hidden most severely restricted. His use flickering and open brushwork. canvas is ridged into long parallel
Drawing paintings. They don't of obviously crude tonal Barry Martin on the other hand lines. These are used both to echo
rely on that formula of grid contrasts in many of the works is evidently eschews prettiness at all the direction of the brushstrokes
painting where colours `do' out of line with his evident desire costs. His large scale abstracts are and to set up contrapuntal forces.
things to each other, painterly to conform to the canons of characterized chiefly by their In Birth-Stone a curved wedge of
accidents provide graphic detail, contemporary good taste. exuberant handling and forceful dark grey sits snugly at the
and means become ends. The Sena's paintings are unlaboured organization. In one case he has bottom, while a vertical shaft of
oppositions and contrasts are but they are also unresolved, applied the paint so thickly that it bright blue-green slides down
more complete, less optical, less revealing the pitfalls of attempting looks as if the crimson layer has towards it. On one side crumpled
spatial. They have wider to produce fragile and rhythmic spread amoeba-like almost to the shapes of mauve and green
implications than the strong surfaces, without the tension edge of the canvas - an organic intrude, contrasting with the
image equals strong painting necessary to make the painting effect which is echoed by the relatively tranquil expanse of
suggestion of the earlier work. work as a whole. Sensitivity of rippled surface beneath. grass-green on the other. In
It may be coincidental that the surface must be allied to a sense of Elsewhere the creamy coating has Pathway to Birthplace the
Hidden Drawing paintings are inner structure, or it disintegrates cracked in splintered gobs, organization is less strongly
slightly smaller and quieter, but
they do seem to gain by
dispensing with the strident
red/black/cream type of contrast.
They also lack the compositional
device of setting plain coloured
areas against modulated ones,
which serves to emphasize the
central vertical axis of the grid,
turning the frontality into a
confrontation. The 84 inch
paintings are more relaxed, and
more fallible. There is not much
force in them. They seem to be
interrupted rather than finalized.
Some of the areas would seem
quite adequate on their own, but
it doesn't matter. They are good
to be with. James Faure Walker

Antonio Sena and
Barry Martin
Hoya Gallery
5-28 March
Although Antonio Sena has
shown regularly in his native
Portugal since 1964, this was his
first one-man show in this
country. A single shaped canvas
of 1971 displayed a noticeable
affinity with the work of Richard
Smith. Now he has reverted to a
rectangular format and attempts
to compensate for this new
simplicity by a more interesting
treatment of the interior space.
His handling becomes more
diversified, so that instead of his
former all-over scribbled texture,
he uses areas of flat opacity to set
off passages of free and open
brushwork. Although the
proportions differ considerably,
the paintings mostly consist of a
central area framed by a
contrasting band of colour. The
basic monotony of this
organization is initially submerged
under a host of 'painterly' devices.
These are usually concentrated in
the marginal area, which
consequently becomes the arena
for a bewildering display of lines
and smudges.
A band of opaque flesh pink
borders an expanse of blackboard
chalkiness. But the textural
sensitivity of the central area is
made redundant by the number of
brilliant blue lines which streak
across in apparently random
directions. Because the
atmospheric handling is so
superficial, he is more successful
in the bolder and more strongly Barry Martin Birth-Stone 1975. Acrylic and aggregates on cotton duck 6 x 4 ft.

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