Cynthia Broan Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of Phat Drop, a selection of recent paintings by Guillermo Creus. The large canvases portray abstract forms which are both seductive and repulsive, familiar yet still abstract. The raw, elegant forms tease and haunt the viewer not merely with their hints at bio-morphic forms, but with the sheer volume and weight of their physicality. The blobs bulge, ooze, ripple and writhe, floating in a flat white field with poignant and humorous defiance. Their smooth, deeply shadowed surfaces have the organic and erotic beauty of works by Georgia O'Keefe, but with a shiny reflection which bears the turgidity of contradiction and the viscosity of ambiguousness. The tension of the surface reveals the struggle between form and content, plumping with growth, sagging into soft folds, bleeding from dissection and joining together into solid balls. The configurations make references to our flesh and bone -an artery perhaps, or a curving backside, a veiny protrusion or an emerging tooth- but never leaves the realm of abstraction. Creus taunts us with our wish to define this thing that is not a thing, reminding us that it is only what the viewer perceives, but as an abstraction it cannot quite be that either. This strange giant mass, looming in its own contradictions of space, gravity and thingness... what is it? It is a Phat Drop.

A phat drop looks like something that could have been formed from lumps of modeling clay, carved from ebony or assembled from scraps found at the morgue. Within the smooth surface of the form, as well as that of the canvas, globs and drips of paint and areas which appear underdeveloped remain as evidence of the process, enhancing the contradiction between the giant configuration we see and the flatness and gravity which it destabilizes. These imperfections add to the humorous and grotesque nature of the work and remind us of the illusion of painting.

The work of Guillermo Creus makes references to the masters of Seventeenth Century art as well as Twentieth Century abstraction, but adds a Mad magazine aesthetic to complement the highbrow with High Camp. In a piece titled Pearl-Like, he appears to have cut up a robe from Velasquez, a rack of meat by Goya and a Reubens shoulder to create a comic exquisite corpse of heroic proportions. In Fluffy Tribal, black and white forms entwine in an orgiastic Celtic knot, while Soul and Logo have molded essential substances into compact orbs.

Guillermo Creus, 30 years old, was born in Argentina and raised in Brazil. He moved to New York in 1996 to attend Columbia University, where he received a Masters Degree in Painting under full scholarship provided by a grant from the CAPES Foundation of Brazil. He now lives in Brooklyn.

A catalog for the exhibition is available.