The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
Scott Williams at 490 Atlantic
2023.6.1
Scott
Williams loves the color of light. I met him as a colleague, since we
both began teaching the same course at about the same time, in the same
department at Pratt. Scott gets fabulous work from his students, and
I’m not surprised, given how well he understands color, light, form,
drawing and design, as demonstrated by his observational paintings and
etchings/aquatints now on view at 490 Atlantic Gallery, through June 10.
Deviating from the straight cityscape views of his
past work, his current efforts push beyond, or rather zoom in from, the
cityscape to concentrate on crashed cars abandoned on Brooklyn streets.
“Why paint crashed cars?” one might ask. To my eye, the answer lies
in the incredible subtlety of colors formed by the reflections of
buildings, signs and other city paraphernalia on the cars’ bent colored
metal, subtleties Scott clearly revels in discovering, and has mastered
at depicting with complex orchestrations of color chords. I suspect the
wrecked cars also become metaphors for Brooklyn’s neglected streets and
communities that Scott’s paintings have empathetically depicted over
the years. On June 10, as a bonus to viewing his art, Scott, along with
fellow painters David Humphrey and Eric Holzman, will show audiences their other talents, by performing their original music from 3-6pm at the gallery.