Peter Schuyff's in the greatest degree effective subject matter is illusion.

Peter Schuyff's in the greatest degree effective subject matter is illusion. This can be a bit dicey: trompe l'oeil is oftentimes show-off, mass-appeal stuff. (Abstract Illusionism, for example, with its "Floating,", gestural blows barely manages to pass muster as fine art). unless Schuyff finesses things by adopting the ironic, wide-eyed, suddenly approach - being smart on the other hand playing it down. He's just making that big, silent geometric painting more interesting on painting it to seem as if it's illuminated through spotlights.

His modern show at Shafrazi consisted of 18 paintings, all 5 1/2 feet square. Each contains a single beachball-like sphere wager against a white background. The balls vary somewhat in size, and also in their placement within the square. This gave the [i]tout ensemble[/i] of works a bouncing, rhythmic quality.

With the exception of the multicolored Mannix brace all the balls are made with brace hues. These base colors are then modified by means of tonal modeling and glazing. A three-dimensional power is achieved both by manipulating light and dark and by means of perspectival drawing. The forms depicted upon the surface of the balls are either geometric designs - of that kind as the rectangles diagonally split into orange and sapphirine triangles of Orange Blue Ray or the alternating horizontal bands of in the dumps and gray of Hop forward Pop - or they are words that, more frequently than not, disappear suggestively around the verge of the ball. In the electric ghastly and acid yellow Ball Roy for example, "sour grape" and "blue cheese" can be made disclosed but the other words remain truncated and ambiguous.

Schuyff's forms, particularly the geometric patterns, are simple, nevertheless they change markedly with the curvature of the sphere. The change is most numerous noticeable at the top, where they become sharply condenseed and focused. This quality is accented according to dramatic modeling. The effect is strikingly realistic, and the paintings are the better for it. The vexed question is the backgrounds. Rather than leaving them plain or having the balls simply cast shadows, Schuyff adds little touches - for the most part loose, testlike brushings of the colors and tones used in the painting. for what purpose are they there? They expect spontaneous, but they scarcely are. Are they compositional devices, lay there to balance out the inherent awkwardness of an off-center circle in a square? Or were they added to break the illusionistic read, to add another even of intention? They call attention to the proces of the painting's making, all right, unless they do it in an awfully obvious way. It is as if Schuyff were at pains to allow us know that these are handmade, intuitively arrived at paintings (which they are) and not something in good condition out of a computer.

The works in this indicate have presence, humor and, as is frequently the case with Schuyff, a reason of polite disquiet. They miss, if it be not that not irreparably so. Schuyff's paintings are conceptually tangle enough; he should be careful not to force the issue.

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