New York Times Sunday, May 11, 2008 Arts * Arts ,
Informed Paintings By WILLIAM ZIMMER Published: March 2, 1997
Barnaby Ruhe's paintings are at the PMW Gallery in Stamford in anexhibition titled ''Informed Energy.''
Mr. Ruhe is ostensibly an Abstract Expressionist and his vocabularyconsists of slashing strokes or compact shapes that resemblemeteorites of luminous colors. He holds portrait marathons and theresults often look like heads by Francis Bacon. But frequently hisinterest lies not so much in a painting itself but in the situationthat led up to the painting.
Across from each other hang two large paintings, one created whilelistening to Miles Davis, the other to Beethoven. The former has manylacy passages while there's a heaviness about the latter.
Mr. Ruhe's dedication to an open process leads him to inform hisaudience that a pair of paintings were made on his last birthday.Their subject is rope. One is of a length of rope, making for adiscrete image with interior spirals; the other is a canvas full ofdisparate strokes, the rope unraveled.
He has elsewhere added familiar art historical images to alreadycompleted abstract paintings, and has provided a textbook surveyingthe history of art for viewers to find the sources. Strong works inthis series include Masaccio's ''Expulsion of Adam and Eve,'' with the distraught pair exiting a green square, and Jacques Louis David'spainting of the assassination of Marat in his bath. An ominous flurry of strokes hangs over this image.
Mr. Ruhe, who has a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Creative Arts fromNew York University, wrote his thesis on ''The Artist as Shaman.''He's also twice been the United States national boomerang champion aswell as throwing his boomerang and splitting an apple on his own headon national television.
''Quicker than a Wink'' is at the Whitney Museum in Stamford through March 19. ''Informed Energy'' is at PMW Gallery in Stamford throughMarch 30.