The wispy, poetic tentativeness of Zoe Charlton’s figures recalls the soft focus of Gerhard Richter. But where Richter’s objective was to question the meaning of painting, Charlton’s two paintings and 24 drawings at Wendy Cooper question the nature of identity, especially as determined by culture. In the painting Three Grace Tryout (2000), three black women do the cancan in the foreground while three white women cluster behind them. The figures are all somewhat sketchy, their softly variegated skin echoing the patchy background. But one of the black women’s heads appears to be dissolving–even more than the other blacks, whose skin blends into the surrounding browns, she seems on the brink of total dissolution. Charlton’s work has an edge, but it’s also humorous. The painting . . . Wish You Were Here, Betty and John (2000) shows a water-skiing white couple being towed by a clipper, apparently a slave ship since there’s a brown hand rising from the water nearby.
