BY WILL HEINRICH
Svenja Deininger’s “Crescendo,” open concurrently at Boesky Gallery’s space next door, also excels at satisfying the demand that contemporary art should both look like something and be about something. But what this Viennese painter’s work looks like is what it’s about: Building up body with coat after coat of gesso, stripping off paint with turpentine and scraping sharp borderlines between brilliant colors, Ms. Deininger uncovers extraordinary beauty in her materials.
She also, as if in passing, makes use of subtle optical tricks like Mr. Houck's. In one small, nearly square, untitled canvas, she surrounds a golden quarter circle with narrow rectangular sections of beige and off-white. Smaller half circles of indigo, black, light blue and the same yellow gold enliven this arrangement; an elegant white double curve shape stretches across the center all the way to the top edge. Because the golden part is brighter, and in the center, it looks overset until you get close to the surface. Then, suddenly, because the off-white and beige sections are so thickly applied, while the gold is so thin you can see the canvas’s weave, the image reverses itself.
