Two gifted young women artists explored the bittersweet pains and triumphs of romantic relationships in recent solo
shows at Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway: Deb Schlouch is a rare and  original talent, a young artist who brashly 
bypasses all the accepted aesthetic strategies to strip bare the self in a brilliantly unschooled style. Her work is without
pretense,  politics, or politesse, but it is all about the human heart and the hard knocks it can take and still survive. In fact,
big, fat juicy hearts play an important part in the personal iconography Schlouch has evolved to convey a host of powerful
emotions, existential yearnings and psychological conditions. She also employs  crosses quite frequently in her figurative
compositions, along with nude figures, some with their mouths sewn shut by big black stitches that bespeak the forces 
that would stifle the kind of no-holds-barred personal expression at which this intrepid  young artist excels.
         
   Of all contemporary artists, one might most accurately compare her to Francesco Clemente for her almost narcissistic 
concentration on the body, conveyed through inventive figural distortions. However, Deb Schlouch has her own unique set
of symbols,  as seen in “Lost and Found Souls,” where faceless figures wander among huge hearts containing big, black 
keyholes, or "My  Silence is Not Golden,” where a man with his mouth stitched shut stands beside another heart overlaid
with a huge black “X.”
          
   Both pictures demonstrate the raw semiotic directness that makes Deb Schlouch such a powerful and promising young
 painter.

   Gabriela Saavedra has her own highly original set of   personal symbols which she employs with inventiveness and wit. 
She renders them in mixed media with considerable finesse in small formats  reminiscent of Indian prints. Saavedra is an
exquisite poet whose tiny, gracefully delineated figures are depicted  in intricate  interiors or fanciful landscapes enacting 
ritualistic dramas with intriguing titles such as “ We Dream of Love and We Overlook it When We’re Awake,” and “Distance
Is Not How Far Apart We Are Now. Distance Is If We Cannot Come Back Together.” Her figures, invariably seen in profile 
in shallow space, have an Egyptian simplicity. Indeed, they function like hieroglyphic characters in dreamlike narratives, 
making love, romping with companionable dogs or other animals, or reclining on a tablein a Frankensteinian Laboratory to
submit to a Rube Goldberg contraption called  “The Memory Eraser.” 
                         
    Wildly imaginative and highly inventive, the diminutive paintings of Gabriela Saavedra evoke a fascinating alternate reality.

   Also at Montserrat Gallery, were three other solo showcase  exhibitions by two  strong abstract painters and a talented 
photographer.

   Norma B. Heisler showed large canvases  that demonstrated the ongoing vitality  of lyrical  abstraction. In “White
Forest,” rhythmic strokes of blue and white created the sense of snow-capped pine trees seen from above, but could just as 
easily suggest turbulent ocean waves. By contrast, “Emerging light,” as its title suggests, has a more  ethereal quality, with its
vigorous streaks of white and yellow more loosely dispersed,  creating a lyrical sense of movement in space.

   Then there is “Blood and Fire,” a dynamic overall composition in vibrant red hueswhich is every bit as violent  and visceral  
as its title, yet possessed of a simultaneous elegance and grace.
                         
   Christine Awad is another abstract painter whose canvases are densely layered with bold serpentine bands of color that form
muscular compositions in which subdued color and strong form conspire to captivate the viewer. Awad, a well known [sic] 
artist and teacher based in Dallas, Texas, creates a remarkable  visual  interest and variety with a severely limited arsenal of 
colors and shaper. Her abstract motifs rangefrom the colorful,  frenetic “Mixmaster,” to the serene, monochromatic “Mandala."
All are distinguished by Christine Awad’s  impressive painterly authority.

   Then there is Nory Qareeb, a young photographer from Japan    whose large color prints of subject such as a flock of  white 
doves or palm trees set against a luminous orange sky are surrounded   by ornate carved wood frames that work in concert with
the image to enshrine and elevate the banal in a particularly  postmodern  manner. There is a sly conceptual aspect to Qareeb’s
work that can be devilishly deceptive,  as in hiscolor print “This is Our Situation,” where  two holes in a stone wall suggest win- 
dows to an alien world, rendering a dazzling  day in a public park strangely dreamlike. “Change One’s Mind,” a serene image
of sepia-toned clouds, and “Advance,” an exhilarat-ing image of a single gull in flight, both have a Zen-like simplicity that takes on
an intriguingly ironic dimension in  those ornate frames that function as an integral element in the work of this innovative young
photographic artist.
         
                                                                                                                                                                 - Andrew Loomis