Jim Klein at Whirlwind

The artist Jim Klein, born in Little Rock, Ark., and based in New York since the early '80s, trained as a biochemist. Though he abandoned that profession decades ago, it has left traces in his approach to abstract painting. Klein sees his mission as being akin to that of a scientist attempting to decode a strand of DNA. However, he aims for mistakes, "because," he writes in a press release, "I believe how you handle mistakes in your paintings is what makes paintings great."

Klein executed this recent series of paintings (2003-05) by applying pigment in either a powder or liquid state to finely sanded white plaster surfaces borne on thick wooden supports. The varying tonalities he obtains result in part from his liquefying solvents (some penetrate plaster more deeply than others), the different tools he uses (rags, sponges, scrapers, brushes and sticks) and the ways he sands the surface once it has been painted. In some paintings, he raises areas of the composition in a fine, flat relief by applying additional plaster, tightly ruled and sanded down with precision. He finishes his process by coating the surface with several layers of a varnish made with wax. The clusters of widely varied marks, the diaphanous effects, the preponderantly black, inky palette and the pervasive sense that Klein is strategizing bring to mind the work of Jasper Johns.

The large (48 by 48 by 3 1/2 inches), painterly High Noon Times Four consists of four sharply delineated, nested squares that shrink in size toward the center. Reminiscent of Johns's targets, the composition also echoes Frank Stella's early paintings in repeating internally the shape of the frame. The tonal gradations within each square and the hard incision of their otherwise barely tangible forms create an impression of greater salience toward the center than is present in fact. Besides Johns, Klein's value contrasts remind one, all at once, of Seurat's conte drawings, Miro's washes and, on a more contemporary note, William Wood's liquid forms.

Membrane Penetration (An Unoccupied Groove) presents at the center of the composition a horizontally disposed, roughly ovoid form in grisaille, surrounded by a field of white that phallically penetrates the form on the right side. Think of Myron Stout or the insemination of eggs. Depending upon what you focus on, the central form, fraught with facture, reads as a volume or as a negative space of ambiguous depth. Klein is a Ping-Pong enthusiast, so speaking of back and forth in his work may be especially apt.

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