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IN THE GALLERIES: MEL RAMOS
Jay Jacobs

Mr. Ramos giveth and Mr. Ramos taketh away. He presents us with a bevy of luscious broads, starkers all, whose denture-like artificiality becomes apparent even as we begin to salivate. Flushes of metallic nail-polish colors suffuse the turns from chiaro to scuro, while an icy blue line with hockey-rink overtones delineates the ins and outs of the female form divoon. Mr. Ramos' dimpled nudes, nobly-nippled and hard as nails, burst forth from candy wrappers, cuddle up to ketchup bottles, perch upon burgers and wedges of Gruyere and emerge uncontaminated from oil cans, their neon-bright boobs flashing "Come hither, drop dead, come hither, drop dead." And if their message and indictment is, at this late date, somewhat platitudinous, they are executed with considerable elegance - an elegance that is lost, unfortunately, in black and white reproduction. Mr. Ramos does not paint ketchup bottles very well, but, after all, who does?