THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 28, 2003~Roberta Smith

JOHN WESLEY
Fredericks Freiser Gallery

Don't look now, but John Wesley, who turned 75 on Tuesday and has long been relegated to the margins of serious painting in the United States, seems to be homing in on some ultimate fusion of 60's formalist styles: Pop, Minimalism and Color Field. The canvases in his latest show include some of his best, especially "Smooch," in which a young man and woman of contrasting ethnic backgrounds and skin tones snuggle together against a sky of crisp Wesley blue. A thin line of sky runs between their masses of straight and wavy black hair like a bit of electricity. Her lips are red; his, gently nuzzling her shoulder, match the pink of her nipple, just visible in the painting's lower left corner. She is wearing glasses.

Hints of broken taboos, kinky canoodling and American malaise flow freely in these works, but just beneath the surfaces of their taut, thin skins. Mr. Wesley excels at taking a shallow peek into the depths. Dagwood Bumstead keeps company with one of Utamaro's geishas in three paintings where Mr. Wesley's colors are especially bright and numerous. In "Aer Lingus" two green-clad flight attendants stand unusually close together; maybe they are serving coffee, maybe not. In "Nail Police" one red-lipped face and three freshly pedicured feet, also in red, are in suggestive proximity, but maybe they are in a beauty salon. And in "Tango and Mexican Movie," Mr. Wesley revisits the romantic close-ups of the silver screen — one hot, one cool — without a trace of nostalgia.

Mr. Wesley remains true to the artistic premises that he established in the early 1960's, developing his work in small but definite increments. Here his compositions are a little more free, his colors sharper, his lines more whiplashed, his black silhouettes — brows, eyelashes, hair — a bit crazier. It all adds up to an indelible fusion of sex, humor and form that has grown tremendously over the years and is now approaching seamless perfection.