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.

Kamini Avril at Bowery
2023.11.17
Kamini Pamela Avril understands the movement of color. She understands the space of wind and the light of air as they breathe through the limbs of trees. She understands the power of memory to extract the feeling of place, to turn nature into metaphor, to explore her love of paint through a process of discovery of form. Before making this series, Kamini painted fables with fairy tale atmospheres where figures merge and morph from twisted landscapes of color, and now, with bravura and confidence, Kamini has turned trees into majestic beings where fantasy still seems to lurk, as the sky and air and bark merge, separate, move forward into our world and back into theirs, where mystery hides as tree branches weave webs of space and light, memory and pure artistic instinct. These large paintings, and a few large drawings, were inspired by Kamini’s keen eye of constant observation, but their real magic burst out in the alchemy of her indoor studio. Along with smaller paintings made completely from observation, the large, powerful paintings and drawings of imaginary trees can be viewed at Bowery Gallery until Nov 25. This Saturday, Nov. 18, Kamini will be giving a talk at the gallery at 3pm.