The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 9,1990

"Paintings Like, and Unlike Hopper's"

by Jennifer Crohn

     Kurt Solmssen's paintings at Marian Locks gallery look similar in spirit to the work of Edward Hopper. Like Hopper,Solmssen is interested in the confluence of architecture and landscape, where shadows have as much weight and presence as objects. Both artists' figures appear as isolated characters in otherwise unpopulated places.
     But Solmssen's paintings are about twice the size of Hopper's better- known works. and despite similarities in the looseness of brushwork, generalization of shapes and overall composition (compare Cold Storage Plant by Hopper to Solmssen's Indian Summer). Solmssen doesn't paint the range of details that play through Hopper's paintings like symphonic motifs. His pictures could be likened instead to big, bright chords of color, assembled to give the impression that everything is at rest. Despite the spacious emptiness they evoke, they are neither as romantic nor as spooky as Hopper's paintings, which are more articulate about silence than they are about stasis.
     The understatement of mood in Solmssen's work may, oddly enough, be a function of his choice of vibrant, high-key colors. Many of those he uses are of nearly equivalent intensity: Yellow-green. aqua, sky-blue and purplish ultramarine are set off against orangey browns and reds. He makes little use of contrast between brightness and dullness.
     Although his work is within the tradition of East Coast realism, Solmssen's saturated, often synthetic looking color and his depictions of late afternoons beneath a clear sky, open spaces and broad, uncluttered interiors seem strongly influenced by a West Coast sense of place.
Marian Locks, 1524 Walnut St. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Through March 28. Telephone: 5464-0322