Matthew Polzin reviews the exhibition Alfred Leslie: Multi-Panel Mammoths at Hill Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan. An excellent slideshow accompanies the post.

Polzin writes: "Working as a painter and filmmaker, Leslie left Abstract Expressionism altogether in the mid ’60s for grisaille figurative painting, a maturation running against the grain of his peers. The six paintings on view are some of the most pivotal of his abstract stretch, and the majority of them haven’t been seen outside of storage since their creation… The paintings that the artist termed Abstract Illusionist display … a crisper method reminiscent of collage. In Lake Front Property, 1962, casually resplendent with its bright palette and narrative qualities, beach elements are nailed down to their archetypal colors and then blown up to monochromatic rectangles, as if torn bits of paper. Biscuity sand, cerulean blue, sun-bleached and sunburned strips frame a chaotic smudge of strokes and movement at the painting’s center, huddled around some illegible summer scene."