Clouds In Fog

Looming, delicate, billowed clouds howl through the work of Gale Antokal at her new exhibit, "No Vanishing Point." With these large-scale chalk pastels on paper, the artist continues her habit of producing epic, washy images, now taking them a step closer to complete abstraction. Some of Antokal's pieces look like old photographs snapped out a moving car's window – the kind children in backseats with Polaroids used to be so fond of taking. A low angle, a blurry tree, and a lowlit sky recall moments preceding the inevitable, eternal question: "Are we there yet?" But we love those clouds. What do you see in them? How did she capture them? Is their promised rain welcome, or ruinous? Antokal's previous work focused on leaving, with its motifs of people carrying luggage and tilting pigeon swarms. She seems to be paring down, which is generally a good sign among visual artists, though we're sad to hear that her signature inclusion of ash and flour as pigments isn't repeated here.
May 1-June 14, 2008