Carlo Russo's paintings at F.A.N. Gallery

I tend not to care too much still life painting because it strikes me as too arbitrary, too much a confection, not enough a statement of human concerns. But Carlo Russo's work treads a fine line in a most elegant manner.

On one hand, his art is as much about shapes in space as the metaphysical paintings of the late Giorgio Morandi. But Russo also seems to hearken back to an older tradition in which the still life functioned as an allegory addressing life's great issues.

Though I can't prove that this is the case, it's nonetheless true that Russo's works are splendidly theatrical, always hinting at greater mysteries lurking beneath the surfaces that Russo so loves.

Surfaces and textures are this man's meat. Whether it's a skein of yarn hanging from a wall or a wooden shutter dressed in peeling green paint, he absolutely nails each subject so that you can all but feel it beneath your fingertips. From these cast-offs of time he makes things of great and incontrovertible beauty.

Perhaps memory is his muse. What makes Russo's work so evocative, I think, is the sense that you're gazing at a window into the past. This sense is further reinforced by his choice of frames, all of which seem timeworn; several are further embellished with painted floral motifs.

Nothing in Russo's art seems left to chance. Rather, everything is rigorously composed. In Still Life with Green and Gray, every one of the five pebbles seems deliberately placed to achieve a maximum effect. Thus the smooth round stone just off center in the painting is every bit as important as the long-necked green glass bottle and the grayish vase that flank it.

Even the titles, in their matter-of-factness, at once deny that there's anything special about the work, even as they recall the glamour of 19th-Century aesthetic art. I suspect that Whistler would have understood Carlo Russo— perhaps better than today's art lovers. This is a show that definitely deserves your attention.