Michael McGuire - New Drawings - Friday March 28, 2014

Review of Michelle's Show at Longview Gallery in The Washington Post

Michelle Peterson-Albandoz 

By Mark Jenkins

...some of the pieces in Michelle Peterson-Albandoz’s “reWood” also resemble modernist paintings, but that’s by design. The Chicago artist combines small pieces of found lumber into large collages such as “Starry Night Construction,” whose interlocking near-triangles swirl in patterns that echo Van Gogh’s famed canvas. If the work Peterson-Albandoz is showing at Long View Gallery is tidier and more decorative than that in her previous exhibition at the same gallery, that’s partly because it’s modeled on such meticulous styles as de Stijl (“Black, Red & Yellow”) and minimalism (“The X’s 1-8”). But the wood’s weathered textures give depth and variety, as well as wit, to the orderly assemblages. “Color Field,” for example, includes hundred of small rectangles in many hues, but close inspection reveals that the ones that protrude the farthest are unpainted. It’s a color field that submerges color.

On view through March 16 at Long View Gallery, 1234 Ninth St. NW;
202-232-4788; longviewgallery.com.