Anthony Ames: Fifty Paintings

In a very real sense, Anthony Ames: Fifty Paintings, on view throughout the summer at downtown gallery (and former NYRA printer) a83, represented a life’s work. The myriad canvases were made by the Atlanta-based architect over a forty-year period, yet shared the same preoccupations. At the opening soiree in July, I saw Steven Holl and Tod Williams chatting with younger designers like Stephanie Lin. This multigenerational cohort had gathered to see Ames’s brushwork up close. The paintings, he explained, “are a way to try and do architecture even when I don’t have ‘work.’” They set up brilliant contrasts, mixing modernist tropes with popular ephemera, so as to challenge the antiseptic perfection of architectural staging. There’s plenty of visual trickery—a pair of Corb-like eyeglasses turn out to be gymnastic rings—and humor, too. Among the many wine bottles and Purist geometries is, without any sense of incongruity, a basketball.