If art is not a form of alchemy, how does one account for an artist such as Lugo? Lugo takes a few bits of charred wood, a scrap of cloth, a length of discarded string, and converts them into an assemblage of a miniature sailboat or a funky little dockside scene under a full moon that is every bit as whimsical and disarming as Paul Klee's �Twittering Machine.� Lugo is one among several aesthetic alchemists of different stripes seen in �The Persistence of Form,� a group show at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from December 7 through 27. (Reception Thursday, December 7, 2006, 6-8 pm).
   Lee Pirozzi creates sculpture from blue jeans crumpled to create fanciful forms.  Particularly ingenious is Pirozzi's �Blue Jean Brain,� in which the crumpled clothing morphs wittily into gray matter.
   The Alaskan landscapes of the widely exhibited Japanese painter Tohru Aizawa impart their own peculiar magic to vistas of overcast skies, icy peaks, and infinite seas  in compositions possessed of an exquisite spareness.  Joseph Kim reinvests Biblical and classical subjects with immediacy by casting them in contemporary scenes painted in a flawless realist style inspired by Caravaggio.
  Impressionism and post-Impressionism serve as inspiration for the paintings of Graham Denison. Yet rather than imitating the masters he admires, this British resident of Southern Spain updates the plein air tradition with his boldly painted scenes, executed with  juicy strokes of a pigment-laden palette knife.
   Women are the inspiration for Sergey Ignatenko, a young painter from Belarus, whose first models were his mother and sisters. Although his style is more akin to classical realism, Ignatenko imbues the subject of women in domestic interiors with a warmth and empathy akin to certain canvases by Bonnard.
   Elizabeth Punches also evokes female figures, albeit from a more fantastic perspective. Punches's women are as fanciful in their elaborate period costumes as the  figures of Maxfield Parrish, although her work is informed by a more contemporary irony. Fantasy also figures prominently in the paintings of C.G, Rodsant, as seen in one picture of a slender nude nymph seated on a pile of rocks and another in which sailboats are seen under a churlish sky. Rodsant's paintings are enlivened by a meticulously detailed textural suggestiveness reminiscent of the �magic realism� of Ivan Albright.
   Animal painting is a specialized field, yet Geraldine Simmons' colored pencil portraits reveal all the psychological insight of human portraiture. Indeed, Simmons' drawings are never generalized images of a species, but tributes to the individuality of each of her animal subjects.
   Paul Skurski's paintings appear to celebrate the sensual joys of youth. That some of Skurski's lithe young models are as attractive as film stars and sometimes seen in romantic situations tempts one to coin a term: Pop Realism. By contrast, Robert Van Beurden harks back to the Dutch masters in his treatment of still life. Indeed, Beurden lives and works in Holland, where such painting thrived in the 17th century, and his oils demonstrate still life will never go out of style, as long as there are artists who can imbue an arrangement of edibles on a table with the breath of life.
   Whether depicting animal subjects, soccer players in action, or a sinuously delineated floral subjects, Daniela Vasileva, who was born in Bulgaria and now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, invests her paintings with energy by virtue of her flowing forms and intense colors. Combining realist draftspersonship with Neo-Fauvist chromatics, Vasileva achieves a thoroughly convincing synthesis of seen and the felt elements.

Click here to see the exhibition catalog

Opening reception December 7, 6 to 8 PM.
From December 7 through December 27 at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea.