John Lurie at Roebling Hall

Better known as an actor and a musician, a star in the long-running band the Lounge Lizards, John Lurie was sidelined by an illness several years ago and exchanged his sax for a paintbrush as his primary means of expression. Judging by the 46 small but intense drawings, watercolors and gouaches on view in this, his second New York solo show, the art world has benefited from the switch. Lurie's compositions are filled with colorful, cartoonish figures, usually accompanied by absurdist captions tinged with sexual references; some are witty and profound, others convey an intentionally juvenile posturing. The images might be farcical, but the approach and use of materials are serious. The work impresses on an abstract level, especially in the crisp 50 inches; line, the textural play of translucent washes and the unusual and engaging color relationships that Lurie employs.

The gouache titled First You Blow Us and Then We'll Let You Go, for example, is at once silly and wonderful. It shows, from the back, a standing young blond woman in a dress facing a trio of white bunnies seated in a field. The title, etched in pencil above her head, appears to be a threat from the rabbits, but the would-be captors couldn't be less menacing. While the image's absurdist kick comes from the woman's standoff with the furry creatures, the work's visual impact has more to do with the luminous colors and lush textures that Lurie achieves, especially in rendering the brilliant, velvety green field. A similar bright green ground appears in one of the show's strongest works, Tiger, a spare and emblematic composition that is another painterly tour de force. Here, beneath the pencil-etched title in the center of the paper, an expertly rendered and highly detailed tiger's head contrasts with the rest of its skeletonlike body, merely suggested by a few deft brushstrokes set against a grassy jungle backdrop.

It's not surprising given Lurie's resume that a number of images represent or hint at stagelike spaces. Amazing Sex People, Omaha shows couples and groups of tiny stick figures engaged in various sex acts on stage in front of a Midwest audience--the unlikely event of a sex circus touring the red states. And Druids 1 Spartacus 0 suggests a stage set for a lavish Cecil B. DeMille movie, featuring robed figures cavorting before a fallen and bleeding Roman soldier. A banner above the scene, reading "Welcome to Stonehenge," seems to indicate that a Druid home-game victory is at hand. But it's the zany spectacle that matters, not the final outcome of the game.

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group