Deborah Zlotsky, Altoon Sultan, Kate Petley,

Scott Chamberlin, and Stephanie Robison

Robischon Gallery

1740 Wazee Street, Denver, CO 80202

January 20-March 26, 2022

Admission: Free

Review by Jillian Blackwell

The five solo exhibitions currently on view at Robischon Gallery each capture a delicate and masterful use of color and texture. When entering the gallery on a gray winter day, one is washed over with the bright palette of Deborah Zlotsky’s paintings. One first encounters Bitch magic, a fat arc of red, pink, and blue curled into the rectangle of the canvas. To the left of this work is Atropos, Lachesis and Clotho. Just as the three Fates might snip a mortal’s thread, three gray scale stripes encircle and pinch a hot blue stripe. Both these works in their composition and deft choice of colors call to mind Josef Albers, showing a true love of colors and their interplay.

An installation view of Deborah Zlotsky’s exhibition *Galatea* at Robischon Gallery. On the far right: Deborah Zlotsky’s *Bitch magic*, 2022, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of Robischon Gallery.

In all her paintings, Zlotsky makes flatness very present, not only with her large swaths of color but also in how she brings the eye back to the surface of the canvas. The surface of each painting looks like a dirty painting studio floor, with a drip here or there, smudged lines running across, and no area left unmarred. This keeps the works feeling imperfect and unprecious. The paintings beneath these imperfections are like a mirror, a world we look into that is actually a flat plane.

Deborah Zlotsky, *Atropos, Lachesis and Clotho*, 2022, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Robischon Gallery.

Further in, her canvases employ wide blocks of vivid color. In Brilly, the vertical stripes bring to mind a TV test pattern, giving the work a retro flare. Though Zlotsky paints each color flatly, she creates dimension with contrasting blurred and crisp edges and overlapping of areas. Across the middle yellow stripe there hangs a three-dimensional loop, rendered shiny and bouncy against the flat yellow. Indeed, every painting has some three-dimensional element like this. Albersonian has two lobes of paint flesh that hang down. Gemini II has a thin belt that cinches in its pink waist and two curved cheeks along its bottom edge. These elements turn the paintings into characters, giving them sly but cheeky personalities.

Altoon Sultan, *Violet/Rose Ground*, 2018, hand-dyed wool on linen, 12 x 10 inches. Image by Jillian Blackwell.

In contrast to Zlotsky’s large cartoonish paintings, Altoon Sultan’s serene works are in praise of small things—diminutive compositions, small repeating loops of wool, and closely cropped images of parts of a whole. Encompassing three different types of media—hand-dyed hooked wool on linen, painted porcelain, and egg tempera—Sultan’s fastidious hand is ever-present. She laboriously processed the wool and hooked each loop. She modeled the porcelain and smoothed its surface. She painted the egg tempera, with the brushstrokes still demurely present. Sultan’s serious consideration of all elements, from palette to composition, reflects her intense consideration of the world and all its small parts.

Kate Petley, *Half Shadow, 2020,* archival print and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 52 inches. Image courtesy of Robischon Gallery.

Kate Petley’s photographs utilize a slight of hand to engage the viewer in active seeing. Petley orchestrates the positioning of the objects she photographs and the eye of the camera, which then becomes the eye of the viewer. This controls when dimensionality is clear, as with the curling flaps in Equal Measure, and when it is flattened, as with the triangular shapes of Half Shadow. Shadow and form become color blocks. Light becomes a material, and color becomes more tangible. By removing context and carefully crafting color, light, and texture, Petley allows the viewer to see these elements with fresh eyes.

Scott Chamberlin, *hoofd*, 2015, glazed ceramic and plant matter, 51 x 16 x 12 inches. Image by Jillian Blackwell.

Nestled in the back room are the works of Scott Chamberlin and Stephanie Robison, who approach materiality and texture with the same vigor that the other artists approach color. Chamberlin’s ballooning ceramic forms give the earthly material buoyancy. Each form is glazed primarily in one color, with surfaces that are crackled or matte, and textured by the handling of the clay underneath, thus achieving rich yet simple surfaces. The forms are very present and matter of fact, and yet mysterious, like the moai sculptures of Easter Island.

Stephanie Robison, *Summit*, 2021, marble and wood, 14 x 10 x 5 inches. Image by Jillian Blackwell.

Robison’s sculptures couple very different materials—wool and stone—which form a symbiotic relationship. Robison molds the marble or travertine to cradle the soft form of the needle felted wool. The blob forms of the wool humble the stone and insert a playfulness to the sculptures, while the stoicism of the stone elevates the wool. Both Chamberlin and Robison breathe life into their sculptures and allow those sculptures to inhabit their own personalities.

The five solo exhibitions show five artists with great command of their domains. Zlotsky, Sultan, and Petley wield color in a way that is refined yet forceful, precise and yet fresh. Chamberlin and Robison present textures and forms that are honest to their materials but also transformative. Chamberlin sums up the way in which the work of all five artists is successful: “In my way of thinking, for the work to be successful, it should be simultaneously odd and elegant, to perhaps reflect an unsettling mixture of strangeness and seductiveness.” [1]

Jillian Blackwell is a Denver-based artist and art educator. She holds a BA in Fine Arts with a Concentration in Ceramics from the University of Pennsylvania.

[1] Quote from Chamberlin’s artist statement in the gallery exhibition packet.