From our review of “Among the Breakage: New Paintings from Providence” at Brown University’s Bell Gallery:

Over the past decade, Providence art has been known for its visionary printmaking and graphics, crafty constructions, and funhouse installations, but local painting has tended to operate out of the limelight. It probably hasn’t helped that the painting coming out of RISD’s MFA program over this span has been lackluster. This is not to say that there aren’t prominent painters here (Ruth Dealy, Lloyd Martin, to name two), but they tend to be, um, artists of a certain age.

So the 10-artist roundup “Among the Breakage: New Paintings from Providence” at Brown University’s Bell Gallery (64 College Street, Providence, through July 10) offers a chance to see what local painters have been up to. The exhibit is organized by AS220 gallery director (and abstract painter) Neal Walsh and departing Bell curator Maya Allison, who are as tuned in to what’s going on here as anyone.

Since the height of Abstract Expressionism in the ’50s, a sort of industry rule of thumb for painting (and art in general) is that bigger is better. Lisa Perez takes the opposite approach, making small, precisely orchestrated mod abstractions. Intuit is a lopsided gray rectangle of wood with a hole cut out revealing a black panel beneath. Intuit projects a bit off from the wall, which glows pink-orange in a halo around the painting. The magic, which she repeats in several works, seems to be that the wall is reflecting bright colors hidden on the back of the painting. Her art is filled with such subtle but acute color gestures that make her paintings hum.

Read the rest here.

“Among the Breakage: New Paintings from Providence,” Brown University’s Bell Gallery, 64 College St., Providence, Rhode Island, June 11 to July 10, 2011.

Pictured at top: Installation view featuring, from left, paintings by Jason Travers; Shawn Gilheeney’s wall painting “Eliminates All Blemishes,” 2011; and part of Masha Ryskin’s “Remnants,” 2011.

Lisa Perez installation view.

Monica Shinn “Lassie and the River,” 2011, oil on board.

Ara Peterson, untitled, 2011, acrylic on wood.

Sam Duket, “Big Blue (Sexy Shad), 2011, acrylic enamel on wood and fiberglass.

Ernest Jolicoeur “Fields and Streams,” 2011, acrylic on canvas over three wood panels.

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