Art: Downtown Scene

Soho Photo, an 80‐member cooperative that opened only two months ago in second‐floor loft at 143 Prince Street, is rapidly emerging as one of the most interesting galleries in the area. Although it has mounted but three exhibitions, it has already shown a rich diversity of quality photography and has given public exposure to many talented young photographers who otherwise might not have had a chance to exhibit their work.

In compliance with gallery policy, each monthly exhibition consists of a theme show — currently, “Bedrooms”—in addition to a display of the work of three member photographers. Those chosen for this show are Harvey Stein, Jill Freedman and Mike Levins. The best examples of Mr. Levins's pictures are his European landscape shots. Mr. Stein has a ghoulish imagination that fascinatingly interrelates the real and the surreal. Miss Freedman makes the most powerful statements with her engrossing photographs of society's disenfranchised and dispossessed. She also has a gleeful knack for pinpointing the ridiculous in convenbehavior.

“Bedrooms,” as might be expected, provides multiple interpretations of this living quarters area and a lively spectrum of the various human activities that take place there. Some of the best photographs include Russ Kennedy's picture of a black man in sick bed, Donal Holway's amusing touch of seemingly disembodied feet propped up in front of a TV and a nude girl of Mark Haner.

Among other downtown shows:

Philip Wofford (Emmerich, 420 West Broadway). The painting of Mr. Wofford is usually classified under the broad heading of “lyrical abstraction.” The latest work, however, is closer in feeling to abstract expressionism. The new canvases, which are larger in size, have become dynamic arenas for explosively brighter colors energetically dripped, splashed, slashed and thrust over the picture surface in varying textural densities, creating a lush sensual effect.

Unlike the earlier work, these paintings possess more defined imagery that is vaguely geometric in form. They now suggest landscapes on a heroic scale, the landscapes of vast atmospheres shot through with rainbow bursts of light, bottomless pits or immense fusions of earth and sky. Some of the canvases such as “Ilemian,” are overwhelmed by the frenzied profusion of color and the multitude of pictorial in. cidents. Yet such paintings as “Upper and Lower Egypt” and “Ascension” are powerful pictures.

Chris Wilmarth (Paula Cooper, 96 Prince Street). For the last two years this young artist has, been showing glass constructions made out of industrial plate glass. The new constructions are made out of, glass and steel that have been cut into precise geometrical shapes. As before, the glass is often etched with acid, endowing the surface with a cloudy kind of impressionistic scumbling, now semi‐translucent, now semi‐opaque. The steel, whose surface has been “blued” into somber tones, echoes and contrasts with the glass in color, form and in the properties associative to both materials. These constructions, which are skillfully crafted and handsomely elegant, are proof that Mr. Wilmarth has the talent to work within his limited framework in a variety of ways.

Luis Jimenez and Rober Rohm (O. K. Harris, 469 West Broadway). Those not familiar with the work of Mr. Jimenez may recall his Fiberglas sculpture of a woman in sexual embrace with a Volkswagen at a recent Whitney Museum exhibition. Anyone interested in this campy, kitschy and occasionally rebarbative expression will want to see more of the artist's hijinx. It has the kind of razzle‐dazzle, rinky‐dink entertainment of a night spent in the penny arcade or on the carnival midway.In addition to flamboyant pieces with heavy handed sexual connotations, there are also a vulgarized edition in glossy tinsel paint and twinkling lights of “The Last Indian” and a Miss America that Bert Parks would never recognize.

Mr. Rohm, whose former constructions were predominantly made out of ropes, has made for this show very large constructions out of 4x4's abutting leaning walls and slabs of plywood from which hang folded hanks of rope and corded light bulbs. These pieces have taken on a more emphatic industrial dimension and are more experimental than Mr. Rohm's earlier pieces. Yet they lack the visual strength of the former constructions.