Washington Post Weekend Edition

Galleries: Mystic Logic at Curator's Office

By Jessica Dawson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page C02

Excerpted

Eighteen dense pages culled from under-recognized Washington artist Simon Gouverneur's notebooks are exhibited for the first time. The drawings reveal a troubled soul preoccupied by mysticism and violence, yet also delighted by numbers and codes, which he juggled with an actuary's alacrity. Likewise, four formalist paintings, completed in the years leading up to Gouverneur's 1990 suicide, show a lust for numerals, spirals and pictographs; some viewers will be reminded of mandalas, others of Sudoku. Despite their graphic punch, though, they don't hit as hard as the notebook sheets.