Last call for Charles Livingston and Priscilla Fowler at Pirate Contemporary Art

Pirate Contemporary Art will host a closing reception tomorrow, July 3, from 6 to 10 p.m. for Charles Livingston: Spaces Between and Other Anomalies, an ambitious conceptual solo in the main gallery, and for Priscilla Fowler: Biomorphic Abstraction, a tidy abstract show in the associate space. Both shows are worth seeing if you can get there in time.

The Livingston show has something of a retrospective quality to it, with the oldest work, an impressive triptych, “Landscape as Object,” dating back to 1999. It features a freely conceived wedge that’s truncated at one end. The wedge is done in black against a smudgy off-white field, and it runs across the three panels, as do a series of numbers which go along the top. This painting inspired the newest piece included, done specifically for this show, “Ma (449)," a mammoth sculptural installation with a sound feature that flows diagonally across the floor. The two dimensional wedge in the painting becomes pyramidal in the translation to three dimensions. The shape is derived from a hidden armature that has 449 bicycle tire tubes stretched around it.

The big painting and the even bigger sculpture would have been enough to carry a solo, but Livingston also lines the walls with a series of fabulous post-minimal conceptual drawings from his “Infinite Drawing” series. Livingston began this series in 2007, and each subsequent drawing has been derived from, and is a response to, the drawing done immediately previous to it. So each one is an interpretation of the one that came before. This is the first time the drawings have been exhibited in chronological order. They’re great.

The paper and Mylar acrylics in Fowler’s show are abstracts comprised of shapes that are evocative of botanical forms. Fowler uses techniques associated with water to stain the paper or to build up puddles of pigment on the Mylar. A number of the pieces sport repeated circular shapes which are orchestrated into dense, all-over compositions, while others have small clusters of forms set against a variegated ground.

The Livingston and Fowler shows close on Sunday July 5 at Pirate Contemporary Art at 3655 Navajo Street. Go to pirateartonline.org for more information.

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