The Gemini Series, Francis Celentano
“Francis Celentano, The Gemini Series at Laura Russo Gallery”
Richard Speer, "Willamette Week"
Visual Arts, Oct 10, 2012
Portland, OR
“Now in his mid-80s, Celentano is going strong, with a gorgeous suite of paintings on geometric canvases. This work is so confident, so virtuosic, so defiantly superficial, it shows that Op is more relevant than ever in this time of bold colors and visual illusionism in video games, advertising and design
On the gallery’s south wall, a trio of Celentano’s diamond-shaped canvases holds court: Gemini 17, 18 and 19. Wisely, the gallery’s installers have given these pieces plenty of breathing room, and they resplend in hues of blue, lilac and black, their lines suggesting sheets of undulating mesh wire. Each piece has the same pattern, rendered with a machinelike perfectionism that is all the more impressive given the paintings’ scale, each of them a whopping 5½ feet wide.”