J. Bowyer Bell, "Mothertongues: Suzanne McClelland at Paul Kasmin Gallery," Artnet.com (December 1998)

It may be just me but the large, singular and splendid work ENOUGHENOUGH, 1998 simply overwhelms this exhibition, casts all the other works as supporting actors. Whether this is a good thing or not (there is another very intriguing smaller work in the smaller, rear gallery: you find your favorite), the one dominant painting is put together with enamel and polymer emulsions, acrylic and charcoal and conte crayon and a great deal of bravado, skill, thought and lot of neat scribbles.

Less rather than more red, in more or less three parts, some with depth, as always with McClelland the surface, the word, the art is busy, snaps, crackles, and pops the eye about. What works in ENOUGHENOUGH works, and nearly everything works wonders. It is hard to scribble and scrawl without summoning up Twombly, hard to approach the far side of abstract-expressionism-revisited without summoning the founding fathers and the faithful followers, hard to make it new in any case: and here we have it new, examined, digested, and now adjusted in a singularly compelling work.

There is the obligatory explanation that the exhibition is all about mother tongues and language and words, and all these words add not one whit to the reality on the wall. If McClelland feels the need of rationale then so be it. As for me, I’ll take the best of the work – would that there was a wall large enough, or my sofa long enough for ENOUGHENOUGH without saying a word. Why bother? If words would do it, we would not have the work and be all the poorer. What I want from painting is to be left speechless. And then begrudgingly report in on what I have seen with all that is to hand: everyday words – another, different, and a less visual medium than Paul Kasmin is displaying.

What really can one say about ENOUGHENOUGH except that it works. It works close up where the scribbles are transformed into splendid drawing, letters and notes to a ghost and surface scrawls amid the paint, beyond the paint, beside the paint, popping about each square inch full and a delight. It works at a distance – or as much of a distance as Paul Kasmin’s gallery permits, when the dance of the surface, the swirls and scrawls are transformed into a work with both surface and depth, neither graffiti driven nor variation of the old New York school.

To scan the wall of drawings is to find sources and bits and pieces but almost nothing that would indicate that there will be an ENOUGHENOUGH – there is not enough there, nice watercolors, adequate drawings, a certain charm, but none of the cohesive power, the thrashing and intensity brought into focus by the large work. And so ENOUGHENOUGH is more than enough, a large work in scope and accomplishment, mature, beyond easy description, but impossible not to admire. And don’t take my word for it; go use your own eyes.