On a bitterly cold Thurday night, I scampered into Betty Cunningham and saw Clytie Alexander’s punched aluminum Diaphans. The pieces seemed to have a quiet serenity to them and remained aloof to the all the hubbub and commotion of the opening. I’d like to go back and watch them for a while with the changing light of day that filters in through the roof of the gallery.

Jake Berthot / The Ridge, Night Haze and the Moon / 2008 / Oil on linen / 35 1/8 x 45 1/8 inches / Betty Cuningham Gallery

I hadn’t intended to walk into this show when I went down to Chelsea last week, but I’m glad I did, and I’ve been back a couple of times since. This is a great show. Unfortunately, the web images do a grave injustice to the paintings. These are paintings that you have to sit with and look at for a long time in an area where there is natural changing light. As the light changes the paintings change. This is oil painting at its richest. Each is a quiet contemplative, typically dark, space with reference to landscape. Landscape entered into Berthot’s painting following his move from from New York City to upstate New York in 1996. These new works continue to have the central deep meditative space of his earlier work, in the 1970’s a gently touched rectangle, in the 1980’s a bar or hovering oval, and now a quietly emerging tree or glimpse of light.

Entering from the street on a bright sunny day, at first, it was hard to see anything. Impenetrable dark rectangles on the wall, flat geometrical black masses. As my eyes adjusted the paintings slowly began to reveal themselves. In the dim lighting of the first room ochres and venetian reds began to glow, prussian blues flowing and vibrating, the solid masses of chromium oxide green standing still against all this movement – trees against the wind. I was mesmerized as my eyes strained to see more. To make out shapes and forms, a tree, a lake, a horizon, a forest, a scene. Dark moody lighting. Dusk. Ominous. Tumultuous nature. Contemporary echoes of the Hudson River School.

Jake Berthot at Betty Cuningham Gallery, 541 West 25th Street through 5/10

 Read John Yau’s review of the show in the Brooklyn Rail