"Kathryn Van Dyke: New Work"

Isaac Mizrahi, of all people, said painting was dead in a Terry Gross interview on Fresh Air last month. But it's not true; it's not dead. It's not exactly painting, though, but it's really nice, sometimes even really smart. Kathryn Van Dyke's new "paintings" open at Four Walls this Friday night. Known for achieving really rich surfaces (her maple syrup-like drips and spider-web paintings were some of the nicer pieces at the "Bay Area Now" show), she has switched tracks a bit and created a site-specific painting installation for the gallery. Thick black spray-painted stripes stretch down one of the long four walls of the room creating a smoky, hazy feeling in the spaces between the lines. Perpendicular to and directly above these lines lies a row of eyes cut out from various magazines. The different-sized and -colored eyes have a gentle quality to them, but they still beg the age-old gangster hey-what-are-you-lookin'-at? question. Which is the point exactly. What are you looking at when you view art is partially answered in Stucco Angel (keenly nicknamed Frozen Moment), an oval-shaped canvas "painted" with dense votive candle drips reminiscent of tapioca pudding beads, hung directly over a portion of the spray-painted wall. It begs us to look at its strange surface, to feed our desire for texture and color. But don't look too long; the power of angels and moments in time lie in their fleeting natures. "Kathryn Van Dyke: New Work" is up through March 28 at Four Walls, 3160-A 16th St. (at Albion). Admission is free; call 626-8515.

-- Marcy Freedman