William Corwin reviews Tangibilia, an exhibition of paintings by Franklin Einspruch at THERE Gallery, New York.

Corwin asserts: “The strongest, and most enigmatic painting in Tagibilia is Private Life. A pair of lovers wrestle in bed, their bodies tangled in a series of angles and stacks… Wiggly glove-like comic strip hands emerge at different points in the tangle—indicating intimacy and pressure. The faces are pressed against each other, their features are nominally different and androgynous, but the hairstyles are very similar, so the gender of the participants is rendered null and void: this pairing is a geometric problem, a Gordian knot. The impossibility of the pose is immediately apparent to the viewer: a pair of buttocks rest neatly on top of several other limbs, and we have no idea how they got there. But the painter’s aesthetic has rendered the situation tangible as a series of carefully orchestrated twists and turns.”