Ishana's final Review: Manuel Neri by Ruby Neri

 The Manuel Neri exhibit at the Andrew Kreps Gallery gives viewers the unique experience of seeing Neri's work through the eyes of his daughter, Ruby Neri. Manuel Neri was born in 1930 in Sanger, California. His parents immigrated to America, leaving their home in Jalisco, Mexico due to political unrest following the Mexican Revolution. Manuel attended the California School of Fine Arts and became an important member of the Bay Area figurative movement. He passed away in 2021. Because of this long history in California, Ruby Neri describes her father as being part of a kind of counterculture to the New York art scene. 

We can see the influence of post-war abstract expressionism on Neri’s work, though his interest in human figures differentiates him from the most popular artists of the time, like Pollock or Rothko. As Ruby states in the press release, Manuel Neri was “influenced by yet entirely separate from the abstract expressionism scene.” 

In M.J. Series I, Neri manages to capture emotion and movement in a still figure through texture and shape. To me, the figure’s body language feels timid or shy, as though the model was slightly uncomfortable in their pose. This slight awkwardness and imperfection is perhaps what makes the figure feel so natural. The plaster surface is heavily textured and has painterly brush strokes in blue and black across the body. The rough, almost unfinished texture of the sculpture allows us to see Neri's mind-to-canvas process. What makes the sculpture so compelling is how human and expressive the figure feels, despite having very little details to denote the facial expression. 

Neri is very sparing with his use of color throughout, using mostly primary colors and usually only featuring one color at a time against a white background. For example, Makiko III depicts a head where the nose is cut off, and blue paint is smudged over the area in its place. The exhibit is minimal and spacious in its presentation of the pieces, allowing us to appreciate the subtle textures, colors, and brush strokes. Apart from the sculptures, the exhibit also features four paintings. Window Series no. 17 stands out from the rest in that it’s an almost fully abstract piece with a much darker tone. It still feels strongly connected to his sculptures, however, because of the brushwork and the color. We can see a very abstracted form of a window with light coming in. Like the figures, he mostly uses green and primary colors. True to Ruby’s assessment of her father, even in Manuel’s abstracted work, the brush strokes feel very delicate and controlled in comparison to paintings more typical of the abstract expressionism movement. 

Knowing that Ruby Neri is an artist herself, I feel she perhaps missed the opportunity to include her own artwork alongside her father’s – even if just a few images were added to the press release – as I found myself interested to see how her own craft took shape under Manuel’s influence. Nevertheless, Ruby Neri’s love and admiration comes across in the press release, and the exhibit serves as a beautiful homage to her late father.