Medrie MacPhee at Michael Steinberg

In a compelling show of recent paintings and drawings, Medrie MacPhee offered work in a mode quite different from that of visionary architecture and industrial decline, which prevailed in earlier efforts. Now, MacPhee's luminous, often single-color grounds are the blank screens against which the action plays. In such paintings as Fly Away (2005) and The Straits of Tartary (2005), a birdcage, wooden wheels, an irradiated tree and odd, unidentifiable creatures clamor for attention. There is a mordant humor in the paintings' formal eccentricity, but there is a serious side as well: what ultimately disturbs is that MacPhee seems to be trying out a language that might have developed after a nuclear war. Her idiom reminds us of the dangers we currently live with.

In Fly Away, there is an open birdcage in the upper left of the painting; in the lower and middle right two cloths, one yellow and one blue, ride the air. Sticks litter the ground in the lower left of the painting; in the upper middle there are beams forming an unusual, partially constructed frame, much like a floating staircase, whose purpose is unexplained. The background of the painting is a reddish brown, a color easily associated with blood. The title offers a clue to the painting's unsettling quality: it looks as if a bird has flown the coop. Is the lost bird symbolic of a missing spiritual presence? MacPhee never makes things easy; in these paintings meaning remains obscure.

The atmosphere of mysterious foreboding is equally evident in the black-and-white drawings MacPhee exhibited. In Untitled Drawing Aftermath #8 (2005), a bandaged tree and a sagging elephant coolly coexist with a partially destroyed building that is sinking into the ground. Torn paper and tape accentuate the fragmentary nature of this and other drawings, which support the paintings and shed light on MacPhee's editing and thinking processes. In Aftermath, we experience the forms as belonging to but also transcending the world we live in and know. Absence and nostalgia are themes that subtly undermine our degree of comfort with what we see; MacPhee's imaginary landscapes explore unknowing.

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