But just as Danto enumerates the many ways in which Hesse's work diverges from Pollock's, so too Caveney's work highlights the gap between visual experience and critical categorization: yes they're 3-D Pollocks, but they're also a lot more, and in some remarkably unexpected ways.

Caveney builds his canvas from assemblages of twisted cloth: or to be more precise, twisted items of clothing. The cloth is gesso'd and then painted in colors of alarming intensity and contrasts.

The resulting objects when wall-hung resemble nothing less than square extracts of tropical reef, in full hallucinatory bloom. The extreme color contrasts are somehow balanced by the extreme convolutions of the painted surface: as paintings these works don't so much have patches of purple as they do literal niches of purple, while as sculpture they go a long ways towards revitalizing the exhausted form of wall-hung rectangular objects.

The degree of spatial complexity achieved in the painted surface so far transcends conventional notions of impasto or relief that it is best described metaphorically (coral reef) or mathematically (fractal manifold). Preferring topology, I propose that these works be referred to as Caveney manifolds.

To advance his art Caveney has three tasks ahead of him. First and foremost, he needs to sharpen his critical eye and do some editing: the small and medium squares are perfect, but the larger works with superfluous assemblage elements are iffy, and the freestanding objects downright problematic. Second, he needs to better submerge the clothing items, which in several instances are too easy a visual read: never discount the joy of subliminal seduction. Third, if he can scale the work to Pollockian dimensions without losing its singular properties, unsuspecting viewers even of Kramer's ilk are likely to find themselves in abrupt non-possession of their socks.