Palermo: Works 1973–1976 at David Zwirner Gallery

Palermo: Works 1973–1976, now on view at David Zwirner’s 20th St. gallery in Chelsea, speaks at close range. Unlike the gallery’s concurrent solo exhibitions—devoted to Suzan Frecon and Alice Neel—there’s no mounting symphony behind this selection of works by Blinky Palermo. The exhibition has moments of real depth, but situated between the abundance of the Frecon and Neel shows, it is in danger of functioning as a comma.

Spanning three years—a frame that seems arbitrary—the exhibition includes nine wall-mounted works along with six drawings. Palermo’s precarious objects are worth getting lost in. Thin black bars divide an untitled piece from 1973 into blue, gray, and orange planes. At the work’s base juts a four-inch-deep block in a slightly more acidic orange tone. It’s that slip of color into space that Palermo is so good at and that came to define the artist’s practice as a maker of what he called objects, works situated between painting and sculpture.

The year 1973 brought another untitled piece in canvas over wood, this one horizontally oriented. Its simple silhouette, a stark line about eighty-eight inches long and one-and-one-half inches deep, with bluntly pointed ends, recalls the tools of writing. It’s both mark and volume, not to mention a real testament to Palermo’s facility with surface; the work roughly layers deep brown and green strokes with delicate flecks of red. Here’s Palermo’s work at its best: a familiar language spoken in the artist’s peculiar—at times tender, at times cool—cadence.

And there’s a lovely-shaped canvas: a white triangle that hovers above the gallery’s entrance.[1] It brings together Palermo’s quick wit for shape with his winking nod to the mystical. And so what if it’s a little jokey? There’s heart in laughing at a good shape.

But if the works in Zwirner’s front room at least offer some warmth, the exhibition’s rear gallery risks frigidity. Six large wall drawings in pencil cycle through various orientations of a parallelogram. Along with the drawings, we get a varnished wood wall piece that, one might guess, offered a guide for the drawings. The room is an exercise in minimalist iteration without Palermo’s humor or curiosity.

Palermo’s work is generous; his surfaces offer delight to a viewer willing to look slowly. But this show is sparsely framed, with little to contextualize the selections, which seem to consist simply of what the gallery could easily acquire. Though we’d never expect bombast from Palermo, this exhibition is easily lost in Chelsea’s shuffle.

Palermo 1973–1976 is on view at David Zwirner Gallery in New York City through April 11, 2015.

[1] This work, Ohne Titel (für Thordes), is from 1966 and thus falls outside the dates of the exhibition. In response to my inquiry, the gallery offered that the work is installed according to Palermo’s instructions and is included in the show as a treat for visitors who are more attentive.