Bill Thompson at Barbara Krakow - Boston

Bill Thompson's wall-mounted works probe the seductive possibilities of shape, finish and color. Each of his small, intensely fussed-over sculptures--formed of polyurethane panels with polished surfaces of acrylic urethane--are elegant but with an edge of self-reflexive irony. One suspects that Thompson is playing on the idea of the artwork as fetish. This latest show displayed some new geometric tricks and more delectable, candy-colored paint jobs in his wall sculptures, which can be rectilinear or free-form, low or high relief. A few works on paper were also on view.

One grouping of similar forms offered five individual pieces, each between 13 and 17 inches high and wide and 4 to 6 inches deep, and each finished with a different jewellike solid color. Their rounded edges and overall lumpiness pick up reflections that are distorted in their deeply polished surfaces. The varying soft curves of all five evoke outsize seedpods or large, smooth river stones, but nature never made anything like these brilliantly glitzy objects.

Compass (2003), a different type of wall piece, consists of four small, red, shiny enameled plaques, each 16 inches square and 2 inches thick. At first glance, they resemble a suite of Minimalist monochromes. Then one notices that the sides of the panels are not cut at a right angle to the front plane, but beveled, and painted white like the wall behind them. In each square, the edges slant off into a different perspective--just as one draws a box in varying perspectives--so that one square shifts toward the left upper corner, one to the right upper corner, and so on. Instead of hanging sedately on the wall, these red squares do a shifty little line dance.

Thompson goes to great lengths to achieve a high gloss in his sculptures, applying and finishing layer after layer. This labor-intensiveness has become a trademark for him. Even his works on paper have a thick buildup of marks, which signals that the process is significant. In CD (Boston/Cadaques), 2002, a graphite-on-rice-paper drawing, a skein of marks covers the entire sheet. Stonework 4 (2002) is a denser ink-on-paper work that resembles a black-and-white version of the aggregate pattern in terrazzo. As diligently worked as these drawings are, there's still a hint of wryness about them, just as there is in the wall sculptures.

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