Dennis Hollingsworth

Peter Frank, LAWeekly Art Pick

Peter Frank is a real gent:

For all their contemplative tidiness, Blum and Kerwin paint richly and sexily. So does Dennis Hollingsworth, but without the good manners. Hollingsworth has covered his huge canvases with a wealth of oil pigments, bubbling and cascading as if spilling from a volcano or geyser. Clots and rivulets of bright, contrasting color run up against one another, somehow never getting muddy. Hollingsworth?s lava comes from the rainbow. There is something else, however, that makes these effulgences seem so much more reasoned, so much more visually and intellectually substantive, than the faux-ab-ex vomitoria they might pretend to be: Every stream and globule maintains its discrete presence, holds its own in the painterly stew. Hollingsworth is not mucking about; he?s actually composing his eruptions, emulating the sense as well as the force of nature.

Michael Kohn Gallery, 8071 Beverly Blvd., L.A.; Tues.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; thru May 31. (323) 658-8088.

I found a succinct bio on Peter:

About the Author

Peter Frank is an art historian and art critic who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in art history at Columbia University. He was art critic of New York?s Soho Weekly News and later served as chief art critic of The Village Voice. In 1981, he was curator of the Exxon Biennial exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, and he has been a curator for Dokumenta in Kassel, Germany. In 1988, he moved to Los Angeles, where he is now editor of Visions magazine and a regular contributor to L.A. Weekly. He is a vice president of the International Association of Art (AICA) critics, and he helped to organize the 1991 international AICA conference in Los Angeles.

Mr. Frank has written several books and many catalogues. His recent books include New, Used and Improved for Abbeville Press, an exploration of the experimental art scene on New York?s Lower East Side and Something Else Press: an Annotated Bibliography for McPherson & Company, the definitive study on Dick Higgins?s Fluxus-based publishing house.

Peter Frank has written extensively on intermedia and Fluxus artists. In 1985, he edited Ken Friedman: Events for Jaap Rietmann, Inc., a comprehensive collection of Friedman?s proposal pieces.