“Paul Manes Solo Exhibition”

Trimper Gallery, Greenwich, CT, May 15–August 15

Paul Manes thinks like a sculptor and paints like it’s nobody’s business. Never one to follow trends, Manes finds inspiration in the works of seventeenth to early twentieth century painters such as Rembrandt, Velasquez, Goya, and Cezanne rather than concerning himself with current trends. With finesse and boldness, making changes and reinventing on the way, Manes carves his own path as he moves from representation to abstraction and back again—often on the same canvas.

        The best way to understand the ever-changing thinking process and approach to painting of Manes is to start with the three small works near the entrance. In one, the application of overlapping and oddly cut pieces of unprimed canvas in Goin’ Up (2024) clearly shows how Manes often paints over textured surfaces. The painted element, a snaking line that has been through a series of changes in tone and color, ends up as pewter—a visual shift that exemplifies changes in tone and color that are sometimes seen in other works in this exhibition. Then there is the cohesive flow of the composition that arises when the uneven edges of the pieces of cut canvas and the curves of the line slowly harmonize.

        Noche en Torrijos (2024), which hangs across the room, is a painting made in the same year as Goin’ Up. Filled with detail and representation, Noche en Torrijos was created using endless applications of precisely painted browns and tans that represent a fantastical field of wildflowers. The result is a canvas that looks like it could have been painted in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, if pure landscape painting was a thing back then. Although handled differently in Goin’ Up, Noche en Torrijos has a clear concern with texture, line, and tonal range, and how they play off each other.

        Two additional paintings created on textured surfaces are Marigot (1991) and Tangled Up in Red (2021). In both, the canvases are covered in cut and torn paper and printed materials. The minimal tactile quality created by the paper layer is quite different from Goin’ Up, where here the texture is more visual than actual. Marigot is about contrast between the geometric and the organic when looking at line as opposed to edge, and about how those two formative fronts create a rhythmic composition that is both beautiful and meditative. At first glance, Tangled Up in Red, a title that refers to Bob Dylan’s “Tangled up in Blue,” has a strangely uplifting and slightly imperiled effect, like the first time one ventures onto a trampoline, and is both curious and cautious. In painting a number of cascading bowls (consisting of colorful lines, mostly red) to having others more fully resolved in tones that mimic the warm gray color of the ink on the printed materials results in this profound back and forth in the picture plane.

        Woman with Pearls (2018) and Untitled Plane (2024) are the two most distinctly different paintings in the exhibition. Woman with Pearls, because the subject summons up a bit of humor through the slightly cross-focused eyes, demands our attention. As a portrait, the framing of the subject is very tight to the form, cropping off the crown of the head and most of the shoulders. This zooming-in is combined with an imposing stare, dark arching eyebrows, and ruby red lipstick that are somewhat filtered through a veil of thick gray netting. The netting contrasts, but does not significantly lessen, the strong presence of the subject. From a painter’s standpoint, the fact that the color of the netting was changed at least once says a lot about the dedication of the artist to his craft and aesthetic. Another markedly different work, Untitled Plane (2024), brings to mind the mid-century fighter planes that were romanticized to the hilt in World War II films made in the US. The crosshairs in the area of the cockpit, which when combined with the stormy skies, intensify the visceral effect of the work.

“Martin Kline: The World in all its Plenitude”

Heather Gaudio Fine Art, Greenwich, CT, May 3–June 14

        Unlike Paul Manes, the art of Martin Kline is far more focused and color specific. The primary medium in “Martin Kline: The World in all its Plenitude” is very thick or built-up blue encaustic. Roughly half of the art here has the encaustic applied and inevitably shaped with a brush, while others are formed by casting the encaustic in variously sized bubble wrap creating mechanical looking grids of concave circles. As paintings, each piece is distinctly sculptural—encaustic paint, like candle wax, that can be shaped as it cools and hardens. In some instances, the encaustic is less tactile and more reliant on color changes from light to dark blue, with the artist applying overlapping same-sized streaks in a crisscross pattern.

        Most of the paintings are done on what looks like birch panels. Where the color of the warm wood peeks through the thickly applied blue encaustic, there is a distinctive inner glow, an element that hits your peripheral vision as a quick afterimage. In Blue Lilac Jewel (2023) and Memento Mater (2024), the depth of the medium descending from the center to the edges has a hypnotic effect, while simultaneously suggesting soundwaves looking something like the Chladni patterns created when strong waves of sound hit flat metal plates resulting in amazing reverberating geometric patterns in sand. The patterning in Blue Leda Tondo (I) (2024) is quite different, and more like what you would see when tiny bits of metal get caught in magnetic fields. With all three works, the application of the blue encaustic is intriguing at a distance and awe-inspiring at close range.

        The bubble wrap cast pieces by Kline look like broken portions of honeycombs reassembled into all-over compositions. The largest piece in the exhibition, Razzle Dazzle (2017), has an army hammock embedded beneath the cast wax adding an unexpected narrative, while Camo Bluebot (2025), with camo pattern in various blues is another reference to the artist’s time served. Inness in Venice (II) (2017) is the most direct in intention and the most stunning work in the exhibition. Set into a broad, gold leaf frame, it puts forth the impossibility of infinity. The visual elasticity created by pairing light-absorbing blue against the gold frame is powerful, while the errant bits and drops of blue on the frame periodically break the hypnotic effect.

        Of these two distinctly different exhibitions, “Paul Manes Solo Exhibition” reveals Manes as more of a wily outsider who moves through life unbridled by public opinion.  “Martin Kline: The World in all its Plenitude” shows Kline as one who fits nicely into the canon of art history (think Yves Klein Blue and Minimal Art), but with a more contemporary conceptual approach. Greenwich, Connecticut, with the Bruce Museum as its formidable heart and soul, has a lot to offer for those looking for contemporary exhibitions in the southeastern part of the state.

D. Dominick Lombardi is a visual artist, art writer, and curator. Currently, Lombardi is curating and participating in three group exhibitions. The first, “You Think That’s Funny, Humor in Contemporary Art” will run from September 6 to November 16 at the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden. The next two exhibitions will be in Portugal titled “Fingindo ou Fingimento (Pretending).” The first will open at Braço Perna 44 in Lisbon on October 30 and run through November 29. The second will be held at Atelier Ghostbirds in Caldas da Rainha, opening on November 8, and closing in January of 2026.