Home / A&E /Theater/Arts                                                                

Galleries

By Cate McQuaid

Globe Correspondent / March 4, 2009

LAUREL SPARKS: Pleasure Dome

At: Howard Yezerski Gallery, 460 Harrison Ave., through March 10. 617-262-0550,

www.howardyezerski gallery.com

Genesis, 2008, acrylic, silver enamel, marble dust, glitter, confetti,  paper mache, small objects,  marker, pigment, un painted canvas, 51 x 48"

Visual and textural delight

Drawings of Venetian chandeliers created ambidextrously are the spines around which Laurel Sparks's gaudy, outrageous, and smart paintings grow. Press material says that her show at Howard Yezerski Gallery was inspired by the color and lunacy of queer experimental film. The title, "Pleasure Dome," is a nod to avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger's 1954 movie "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome."

Sparks's paintings have the visual and textural delight of a second grader pouring her heart into arts and crafts. Poison greens, neon pinks, and electric blues appear in dollops. Then there's glitter, marble dust, and wads of bright papier machŽ that the artist throws at the canvas like spitballs after she has finished painting.

But sheer variety of materials and tones doesn't make a good painting, heaven knows. In works such as "Genesis" and "Christmas in July," Sparks rigorously prods at some of painting's eternal riddles.Background floats to the surface and back. Figure and ground tensely exchange places. The loopy, abstracted lines of the chandelier might describe a central figure, but the way Sparks paints around them - sometimes filling them in, sometimes dripping over them, sometimes drawing them to the surface - she engages the viewer's eye in a constant dance of veils.