Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly, MA.

Essential Gesture: Sculpture by David Newton, Paintings by Lloyd Martin, Drawings by Mara Metcalf

Touch reigns supreme in this show. The rugged physicality of David Newton's sculpture, staccato puffs of illusory matter on the rice paper of Mara Metcalf's drawings, and thick fields of color underlying the rough, linear shapes of Lloyd Martin's paintings, all bear witness to the artists' hand. Metcalf and Martin work in layers, giving the essence of their gesture a rich ground on which to make itself known-not so much by intention as by inevitability. By remaining in touch with what lies beneath a surface, the artists keep their surfaces alive.

Newton's two large site-specific constructs deliberately counter the gallery's space, defying, while at the same time describing movement. One of the structures grazes the cieling-a tall, unfinished, wooded crate--cage. Inside, a plumb line drops, poised to swing like a pendulum invoking the nature of time, just as Martin's slow lines on top of alternately heaped-on and scraped paint invoke its passage, and Metcalf, with her inky infinite spaces, hints at its release and spirit.

Expressive and articulate, the artists take on concepts of space, time and motion without the predictable encumberances. Through personalization of form and rapport with materials, they transform the essential gesture of the show's title into a physical, sensual, and spiritual force