The first published review I ever wrote was for the Charles Henri Ford exhibition mounted at The Mitchell Algus Gallery in 2021, since then, the gallery has become one of my favorite places to see art. Algus has an eye on things no-one else is seeing but that deserve a good long look. The gallery’s recent exhibition of a selection of paintings by the little-known painter Gerhardt Liebmann (1928–1989) is a perfect example. Liebmann was born in Oregon, studied architecture at Harvard, trained with Walter Gropius, spent a few peripatetic years exploring architecture and art, then, landed in Soho as one of the first artists to redefine the neighborhood as a haven for artists seeking large affordable spaces in which to live and work.

        Over the course of his short painting career, Liebmann’s art took a few unexpected turns. He made images of New York street scenes. He made drawings of baby dolls that evoke Hans Bellmer. He made illustrations based on narratives from classical music. Most surprisingly, he was a commissioned artist for the Saudi royal family. These bodies of work however were not represented in the exhibition. The work in the Mitchell Algus exhibition primarily focuses on medium size paintings that represent the artist’s unique surreal vision of an intersection of architecture and landscape.

        In a few paintings, architecture is inverted. Geometric wells are carved out of the flat white field of the canvas, as though the canvas were not just a field, in the sense of a painting-as-field, but a vast uninterrupted plain, a sort of concrete prairie. This reads to me as an architect’s subversion of the twentieth century trope of the white cube gallery. In these paintings, rather than a white cube being created in an old industrial building through an architectural stripping down, a seemingly old brick structure is carved into the white cube. For example, in the painting Where, (1968)three brick facades of a well are depicted in classic one-point perspective. Each wall contains one or more openings displaying unpopulated and unfurnished room. The rooms have stairwells and passages that lead to places unknown. The composition suggests Escher; the line work is mechanical; the brush strokes remind me of late Agnes Martin; the vibe is a little bit that of the abandoned piers that use to stretch over the Hudson.

        In other paintings, Liebmann upends the metaphor of New York City as a series of canyons built upwards from the streets, and instead presents the city as a series of rooftops that he presents as geometric mesas. His lonely mesas are populated with bulkheads, bits of wire and wood, and the occasional chair—casting shadows, conveying surprising emotion. In Two Roofs–-two chairs (1977), two absurdly large rooftops are separated by a mere whisper of space. The depiction of walls and shadows provides a slight nod to Op-art in the composition and then it opens up to reveal architecture and narrative. The city is abandoned, and the sky is hazy, and the shadows are long, and it is eerily peaceful. In Roof Debris, Summer Moon (1977) A single roof top appears as a proscenium in reverse, a stage that juts out away from us. This stage is set with a bulkhead, a ladder, a box, a pair of chairs, and a long single piece of wire—all waiting perpetually for someone to make an entrance. Compositionally the painting is quite like that of Where, but the void of the well in Where becomes the stage of Roof Debris, Summer Moon, and the comedy of Where, is replaced by something somber.

        Surprisingly, Liebmann’s untenanted paintings are accompanied by a pair of intimate figurative works, that suggesting something about his private life and a love of the male form. The first figurative work, Nude Male Dancing, (1980), is not overtly sexy. The slanted floor, the paneled wall, The model with his aquiline nose, graceful yet workaday manner evoke Caillebotte’s Homme s’essuyant la jambe, painted nearly a century before. The second figurative painting, Nude Male With Towel (1980), is an elegant painting that references both academic painting as well as pre-AIDS/HIV beefcake (though this was not a concept at the time of the painting). The figurative works were made from photographs taken by the artist; in this particular painting, he includes a subtle detail of the waving paper backdrop behind his model which in itself is a departure from the rigidity of his architectural renderings. The figurative vein in this exhibition is deepened by the inclusion of a rare artist’s book, created by Carl Morse in 2007, which assembled a large collection of Liebmann’s photographs of friends of lovers—photographs from which Liebmann made his nude portraits.

        Photographs by Peter Moore and Babette Mangolte documenting Trisha Brown’s “Roof Piece” performance, as well as stills from Louis Johnson “Two” performance, add further context to the paintings. Not just in their depiction of the urban rooftop, but in the way they capture a moment in New York art history. The photos also manifest a notion that haunts the show altogether—an artist’s work relies on us to continuously bring it into the cultural zeitgeist. These paintings seem prime for remembering right now. They are immediately satisfying and easily open to reveal more and more. Then with more time, his diverse work, intellectual and technical prowess, and his fascinating life bewilder a little bit, then start to demand some real contemplation, but the rewards are worth the effort.

Paul Moreno is an artist, designer, and writer working in Brooklyn, New York. He is a founder and organizer of the New York Queer Zine Fair. His work can be found on Instagram @bathedinaftherthought. He is the New York City editor of the New Art Examiner.