1991, David Row at John Good Gallery

An impressive, full-bodied show of six recent paintings by an outstanding youngish painter whose innate reserve has, in the past, led to very elegant work lacking vividness and vitality. Row’s new paintings, at. long last, have color—beautiful, off-key, hothouse colors that fall somewhere between the palettes of de Kooning and the designer Romeo Gigli. Row is an intense surface worrier and a segmente

r of planes. In this sense he is a disciple of both Brice Marden and, increasingly, it would seem, Sean Scully. Here, on canvases both traditionally and irregularly shaped, he layers, rubs, scuml)lcs, and waxes as usual. But where once this process resulted in works as straitlaced as school uniforms, it now leads to things as mysterious, acid, and juicy as pomegranates.