Review: Adrianne Rubenstein: Global Warmth and Global Cooling @ Broadway
****.5 / *****
Rating: **** .5
Review: If shows can be broken up into a happy/sad dichotomy, as the press release suggests, then Global Warmth and Global Cooling has a smile on its face—or, it's at least attempting to channel sanguinity.Â
The colors are nice: paint is smeared and spread liberally like cream cheese at a Jewish deli and the backgrounds pop with zesty amalgamations of the Rubensteain's palette. Despite busy brushwork, the paint is layered on thinly. It isn’t stacked, though it does pop.
In Still Life with Spiral Vase (all 2021), a gamut of yellows and oranges fill the empty space; each color is demarcated without blending yet does not distract from the lyrically abstract representation of a vase holding flowers in the foreground.Â
All the paintings—14 in all—are funky, freaky, and fun. The size of most canvases is impressive. The largest, Ophelia in the Snow is 72 x 96 inches. If a Shakespeare character makes an appearance, it is not visibile (offstage?) behind all the stars and flowers—motifs throughout the show along with donut-like circles.
The pictures that dive into figurative painting are lighthearted. You can sense that Rubenstein is having a good time while she puts these things together. One work features a sky-blue background with hearts and a rainbow near the center of where X and Y axes meet. It’s a friendly reminder that the sublime can also be reached through play.