Fri, Jul. 26, 2002
By Edward J. Sozanski
Inquirer Art Critic


New talent sampler. This year's new talent show at the Rosenfeld Gallery offers a stimulating variety of painting styles, from hard-edged realism to process-driven abstraction to mixed-media collages.
Tunisian-born Emna Zghal begins her seductively colorful paintings as woodblock prints that display bold wood-graining. She builds up the images with other media to produce intricate, multi-hued interlacings that suggest exotic textiles.
Barbara Neibart's mixed-media works reveal her fascination with physics; they bear titles such as Red Shift and Event Horizon. They aren't about physical laws but about light-hearted interplay between words and images.
For instance, Playing Dice With the Universe, which refers to a famous comment by Albert Einstein, is filled with dice.
William Ciccariello's small oils are nominally realist still lifes, but they transmit mildly romantic vibrations, which makes them the most intriguing works in the show.
Ciccariello paints stacks of stones and bricks crowned by natural things such as wild mushrooms or a single, resplendent butterfly. Soft directional light infuses these small oils with an elegaic quality, raising them above the ordinary.

Rosenfeld Gallery, 113 Arch St.;

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Aug. 11. 215-922-1376