Elizabeth Neel’s “Arms Now Legs” is on view by appointment at Salon 94’s 89th Street gallery through August 27. The exhibition title is a reference to the beginning of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Neel’s paintings themselves metamorphosize out of a collage of remains. While for Ovid, his remnants were the scattered pieces of his manuscript, for Neel it’s intimate hues and effects that she has collected.
Every painting is composed of neatness with spills of color. She achieves this effect by pouring paint into the folds of paper and pressing it to canvas, like pressing a flower in a book. Neel’s methods of mixing paint with her hands and the various kinds of brushing, rolling, pressing, and smearing is a performance of choreography that gives each work in the series movement.
