The colors—pinks, blues, and earth tones—are varied, often in muted hues, but the surface remains monochromatic.

Result #1

The colors—pinks, blues, and earth tones—are varied, often in muted hues, but the surface remains monochromatic. The paintings vary from a sheer texture (in one, mid-table blues, in the second, pinkish-violet-brown) to a more dense, almost skeletal, visual texture. The final panel, the largest of the three, appears to have been worked from white-walled boxes, save for the four lone brightly painted panels that lend the works an atmospheric look.These paintings are all inscriptions—texts that invite the reader to learn about the works subjectivity and give insight into the context in which they were created. The paintings are objects with internal meaning, as Plato described them, and the viewer is encouraged to investigate their physical properties. A visual investigation of these objects allows the viewer to discover the complex nature of their surface properties and the physical properties of their surfaces. The finished paintings, however, are documents of material properties. The surface properties, for example, are calculated to produce a sense of reality, an impression of solidity and resistance, and a sense of solidity and resistance. In addition, the inscriptions give the viewer a sense of their designers intention, which is to create a tangible and personal image. With this goal in mind, the viewer must enter and leave the painting, and thus immerse himself in the paintings material nature. Art is defined by the creation of meaning, and this is why for Bohannon, meaning cannot be imagined, and meaning must be realized. If Bohannon wants to make meaning, he must make it tangible; to make an object tangible, he must create an illusion of it. To make an object tangible, one must leave it in the world, and Bohannon does this with care and precision, allowing it to live up to the expectations of its maker. Bohannon abounds in inventiveness, with the spirit of invention, but he never lets the atmosphere of the place cloud his idea, or vice versa. His insistence on the same is essential to his work.

Result #2

The umber-green of Blue Genie, 1994, for example, evokes a, you know, blue-green glow, while Blue Genie, 1994, may be a shiny orange—a sort of Chirico?—with a hint of emerald green. The painting is decorated with a whirring, angular, vertical-shaped sound—a door frame, perhaps, that can be placed on the floor, or, in any case, attached to the wall. In the end, this seemed to me the only way to make this work work stand up to the rest of the show, as one could just imagine.Some of the works in the show have a vaunted history, like Flowering Bloom, 1994, with its daffodil, fuchsia, pink ribbon, and a very eerie-seeming spiderweb; and Just the Facts, 1994, with a birdcage made from fresh-picked figs and an entwined floor mosaic. But even these works are entirely reliant on the viewers memory. How else could one imagine the vivid, energetic colors of the most beautiful flowers one could find on the beach, the elegantly layered wallwork of the new Bronx borough of New York, or the paintings of abstract collage, embellished with the delirium of the artists mind? The best of the works in the show, however, are those that seem to emanate from the depths of the mind. I like these most when, when all of a sudden, one day, one of them happened to come into focus.

Result #3

The colors—pinks, blues, and earth tones—are varied, often in muted hues, but the surface remains monochromatic. In the most interesting of the images, the color is veined in a few fine lines; several are vertical in the middle. The surface is thickly cracked. The electric and gas lights, bulbs, and fluorescent lights are simple, to the point, and include no abstractions, as were the shapes and elements in the images. While this inventory may seem esoteric, the authenticity of these colors is undeniable. The photographs are wonderfully personal.The oversize canvases here could be labeled collages, or could just as easily be seen as postcards. The pictures in the mid-70s, however, in which work was shown on a display board, were realized on canvas and included a four-foot-wide grid and four-foot-high canvas stretcher. The paint applied on these pictures appears, of course, to have been applied with brushes. The colors, not to mention the paint that has been applied on the pictures, appear as a static field of distinct colours. The photographs are thus paintings of pastels. They are bound by their dependence upon the past, not on any formal commitment.The white canvases here are ordinary, made from rag board and attached to the wall. They share many of the qualities of the large works in the exhibition, with the exception that they also have the form of containers in which to hold paint. The paint has been applied, put on canvas, and covered with a transparent, thickly applied layer of watercolor. The colors, not to mention the watercolor, the oil paint, and the light-painted areas are all present. The light and color choices are nice, but the shapes and colors tend to run off the wall. The paintings, however, have a dramatic effect, as if the vast space of the canvases were a theater created out of the combination of images. What is striking about these paintings is the way in which the compositions, in addition to being simple, are stunning.

Result #4

The colors—pinks, blues, and earth tones—are varied, often in muted hues, but the surface remains monochromatic. The large format does bring out the drama in these subdued hues, but the effect is never vivid. This is most evident in the pale, smudgy blues in the South Carolina pale, smudgy, smudgy, 2003, a field of greys, and in the light, muted blue-black of the invisible, unacknowledged dust that collects around the edges of the canvas. A map of the northeastern U.S. is nearly completed, 2001, a vast map of the Southwest is barely finished, 2001, a self-portrait of a painter who is no longer around is likewise in progress, 2001, a painting with an astounding degree of craftsmanship but no hint of style.These are works that only recently, as some were raised in the abstract tradition, are being seen. Much of the work in the show has already been seen before, but the sudden, new, shifting way in which the artist approaches painting is revealing. The images here are like shadows, not solidified solid blocks of paint but cold, artificial forms, ghostly elements that are nonetheless haunting. Robert Morriss exquisite, often unreal, surface is here rendered in the dark, creating eerie, cramped passages and microcosmlike spaces. Viewed together, these vast, smeared canvases pull together to create a metamorphosis of mirage.When I entered the gallery, the artist had chosen to paint the title of the show—an acronym that appears in all six paintings, all titled Mars, 2000—to accompany the painting. The painting itself is not called Mars, and the title is Mars or if you want to think of it as something, its called Venus. The figurative word is a metaphor for the feminine and masculine aspects of the body, and also for the concomitants of the body—vagina, vulva, ovum, and so on.

Result #5

The colors—pinks, blues, and earth tones—are varied, often in muted hues, but the surface remains monochromatic. The effect is akin to the wallpaper used to decorate rooms in the middle of the city, where the colors are met and smoothed over. The shadows are more natural, more structured than the paintings. As a result, the light is more complex and unpredictable than the shadows, with no clear lines or consistent source of illumination. The color, too, is more distinct and variable. White is also more involved in creating a sense of time and space than dark, and the shadows and light are more acute and dark. The result is that color and shadow can blend, depending on how they are used. While I was looking at the paintings, the shadows were being built up, the colors were being worked over, and the colors were getting darker. In effect, the colors were becoming the same color, or the same one. By contrast, the shadows created by the colored-paper works, which were more dense, and were more dynamic, were more mysterious. The colors of the paintings and the shadows were never complete; they became continuous. This is not to say the paintings are not beautiful or that they are too simple, but they are not empty and mysterious. In fact, they have a richness and complexity that overwhelms them.The paintings have been coated with rich, viscous pigments that leave a rich, rich, rusted patina. The work is decorated with small, irregular, randomly organized patterns and textiles that have been applied in patterns that are distinctly personal. In these paintings, the gestures, and the sources of the gestures, become forms that are not represented by the colors but by the gestures that are depicted. These are not paintings by any means, but they are made by creating something special and unique. These paintings are not simple, but they are complex and idiosyncratic in their sources and settings. Unlike the works in the exhibition, which were made from ordinary materials, they are handcrafted.