Julia Fernandez-Pol in Denver

In the Denver Post Kyle Macmillan writes that New York artist Julia Fernandez-Pol‘s solo show at Sandy Carson Gallery proves that pure painting may overcome non-visual conceptual projects yet. “With concept often trumping craft and the entire medium regularly receiving death notices, revelry in the physical act of painting has hardly been a prized commodity in the contemporary art world for many years. But if a striking exhibition on view through Nov. 14 at the Sandy Carson Gallery is any indication, it just might be primed for a comeback….One of the show’s standouts, ‘Green Chaos’ (2007), a 96-by-80-inch oil on canvas, takes up where famed second-generation abstractionist Joan Mitchell left off. Like the variegated topography of her works, multiple methods of paint application abound in this spirited composition. Subtle washes and graceful drips commingle with thicker, more assertive sections, including an unruly heap of paint that juts as much as an inch from the canvas. It is chaotic, as the title suggests, but it is controlled, pleasing chaos. The largest portion of paintings consist of more manicured, evenly textured canvases, whose lush, creamy surfaces look like frosting on a cake. Indeed, Fernandez-Pol’s use of a large syringe to apply thick, squiggly lines of paint is similar to techniques used by cake decorators. ”