This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 20, 2011 - "Expansions and Stratifications" at Good Citizen Gallery features works by Karl Jensen and Ken Wood, who were both trained as architects and have parlayed their skill into remarkable statements on physical and visual structure. Brooklyn-based Jensen has produced four "Expansions," sheets of hand-cut white paper that hang from the ceiling, fanning out into rhythmic plays of surface and void, line and plane.
Wood's series of "Strata" are collagraph and relief monoprints that juxtapose gesture and geometry, resulting in overall harmonious compositions as well as some unexpected visual surprises. Wood, a professor at St. Louis Community College Meramec, clearly has a keen sense of mid-century modernist abstract aesthetics, but the prints are anything but nostalgic. Their structure and syncopation echo without duplicating the tectonic sensibility of Jensen's paper works and make for a very satisfying pairing.
Ivy Cooper, a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon art critic.