Chuck Bowdish, "Best Not To Annoy God" (Sept 5 - Oct 7, 2012) was the last show I saw at the wonderful Steven Harvey Art Projects, located just south of east Houston Street in Manhattan.
I was most taken by the watercolors, as seen below. Echos of Picasso's figurative work can be noted in the work (as it is here). Part of its narrative is derived from the artist's dreams apparently. I can happily live with the mystery and allegory here. However, the hook for me is the sensuality in the line quality, and especially the blocky disjointedness in the overall vocabulary. I get really responsive to that when it works. It could be line cutting to blankness, blankness cutting to pattern, pattern cutting to texture or mass, or mass cutting into solid tone -- and it's still organically whole. I think it has something to do with the artist's responsiveness. Being selective about how each thing is treated or defined.
Then there's the other kind of work by Bowdish, such as this one. This piece was also in the show.
