Run don't walk: a stroll through Gorky's Ardent Nature at Hauser and Wirth uptown

When you walk in the door: poured oil with opaque runny marks--a pile of joyful shapes and textures.
Gallery Links 

At the Gorky retrospective in Philadelphia years ago, the drawings were shown grid-like on a wall. Here, in  an almost perfect, exquisite installation, they are accompanied by relevant paintings.

Even the wall text is great. 

Wounds or portals, demarcated within the script brushed lines create a private syntax.

Populated, here and there, with the surrealist configurations of elegant lines we associate with Gorky. 

In the back room, one of the most perfect paintings ever: dark and light, opaque and transparent, dry and wet.

Another syntax: 'scoops' of space, hollowing out areas for symbols and marks to inhabit. 

Matisse's Red Studio reconfigured into liquid, pulsating space.

Large charcoal drawing, using the wipe out method to delineate form.

Earlier works by a year or so

Dynamic, lively crayon drawings on the third floor

Heavier paintings, too--spoke with Vico at the gallery about triangulation and hidden forms and motifs;

But the paint in these is heavier, the surface almost choked compared to the watery elegance and restraint of the other works, such as

First floor, back room, shown before in this post. It strongly suggests an interior space, such as Delacroix's Women of Algiers, though the light on the top left third of the painting is only alluded to in Delecroix. For extra fun, and because Gorky studied him so passionately, I include a link of Picasso's reconfigured Women of Algiers. Picasso Women of Algiers at www.lafriemeuse.com