Ok, February review time! Apologies for the absence last month, but I was conducting interviews for my other site, The Print Perspective (have you checked it lately?) Navigation in the crossroads was difficult in the aftermath of “Snowpocalypse”, with many of the sidewalks still buried up to a foot deep in snow. As I expected, there wasn’t a whole lot going on, but I managed to find a couple shows worth talking about, so in honor of our shortest month, here is a short review…
Jodi Lightner at Arts Incubator – Best in Show
Jodi Lightner’s show of drawings at Arts Incubator is one that aspiring young artists should see, because she puts on a workshop of effective painting and drawing techniques. Her pieces are relatively large, with the smallest dimension being about three feet or so, and from a distance they don’t look like much. Most of them contain soft blends of muted colors created by imprecise brush marks. There are a few recognizable objects that are clearly seen, and also some rough indications of buildings and other structures worked into the images. They appear to be a similar style to Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” which is interesting but not incredible. However, the key to Lightner’s work that does make it incredible is the subtle details. The moment of realization comes when you draw in close enough to see exactly how dense and rich the image is, and find that in fact there is a framework and structure holding the loose washes and strokes of paint together.
Using subtle details to pull a piece together is not uncommon. More often than not moving in closer to examine a piece will change how its appearance for the better, but Lightner uses subtlety in a very skillful way, so well that I had no expectation of finding anything new under closer inspection. All of her drawings are on frosted mylar, a translucent film with a matte finish. This surface gives the final image a very different appearance than if it were on paper, canvas, or wood. It’s hard to describe exactly, but the mylar softens everything in the work. All the materials seem to merge together even though there are obviously separate layers of paint and ink, and the mylar reflects the light and also allows the white wall behind it to show through in a way that gives the pieces a diffused haze effect.
This, combined with the limited amount of paint the surface can accept allows all kinds of fine lines to tie the piece together, and exploring these environments is what makes Lightner’s work so exciting. The line work provides a sense of completion to the loosely-brushed composition and it becomes apparent that there is actually a tightly unified structure to the pieces. In one piece a grouping of pale horizontal streaks are revealed to be fragments of a staircase. In another, what appear to be the support cables of a suspension bridge provide grounding to roughed in fragments of ornate interior architecture. In all the pieces she is able to strike a perfect balance of activity and stillness, line and form, detail and ambiguity.
For me, looking at Lightner’s work brings a haunting feeling of solitude. She portrays things associated with dwellings, but there is no indication of any people in the work. The fragmentary portrayal of these places seems to express an idea of abandonment, as if we are seeing these spaces as they crumble in disrepair. Several of the buildings and places she portrays actually have indications of wear – in one piece a weathered looking shack sits stranded in the middle of the page, and the walkway in “Carrying on Like a Pendulum” is littered with pebbles and grime from disuse.
But considering the title of the latter piece, we could also consider the possibility that these pieces mean to express a passage of time. In a world where change is constant, we strive to construct stable environments for ourselves. The buildings we make are part of a struggle against change and unpredictability, and the contrast between the highly rendered areas of her work and the more ambiguous parts could support the conclusion that she’s expressing something about this part of our existence. Also at play is a consideration of the larger idea of structure vs. chaos. When analyzing situation that is thought to be chaotic, it is likely that the apparent randomness comes from inaccurately interpreting fragments of a complex pattern. Such is the same with Lightner’s work. At a glance there appear to be many parts placed more or less at random, when really they are pieces of a larger underlying structure.
There are a number of ways that the work can be taken and all of them make sense. But I think perhaps the best way to take them is just as an interesting visual journey. The effects gained by the mylar give the pieces a dreamy feel, and Lightner provides many good entry points into her works with a use of perspective and recognizable objects that lead the viewer into the environment. These pieces are about feeling, not thinking, and they’re very good at what they do.
Jodi Lightner's website can be seen here.
Anna Zimmerman at Plenum Space
Taking interesting photos this day in age is difficult because of how ingrained cameras have become in our lives. It was only 15 or so years ago that taking a picture at least required the effort of taking film to be developed, and printing anything larger than a 4x6 required a decent amount of skill. It was easier to appreciate a photograph then because even a picture of something relatively common was still just above the ‘I could do that’ bar. Now just about everyone has a digital camera on them at all times and printing anything is as easy as emailing a file to Kinko’s. Taking an impressive photo is all the more tricky now because there is no inherent value in it. A photo these days needs some sort of gimmick or some real thought put into the content to avoid being brushed aside as ‘just another picture’, and it seems like Anna Zimmerman understands this.
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| "Symbiosis of Lime and Lichen" |
Zimmerman’s show of color photographs at Plenum Space focused on finding interesting compositions in extreme close-ups of scenes and objects. Because she zooms in so close, the viewer does not automatically think about what the objects in the picture are. This opens up possibilities within the viewer’s mind. They are no longer looking at a photograph of something in specific, but an abstract image. And because the brain doesn’t automatically recognize anything it dwells on the details more, and we are able to appreciate the shapes and forms we see for what they are, not what we think they are. It works best in “Symbiosis of Lime and Lichen” where the photo is filled with gradients of neutral colored specks. It takes a few seconds to realize the shot is actually an extreme close-up view of a cement step, and even after this realization comes it is still possible to enjoy the photo as the non-representational gradations of neutral-colored it was first seen as.
Knowing that it is a picture of a step does not take away anything from the image itself, and actually enhances it a bit by getting us thinking about paying more attention to detail in our daily lives. If a simple cement step that we walk over so often can look so interesting from a certain perspective, how many hundreds of similar instances do we pass by without even noticing?
It is clear that seeing the image as abstract and shedding the mental labels we have for objects is an important part of achieving this effect, because her photos where the objects are more recognizable are not as strong. It is not to say that there is nothing of interest in these photos. A shot of an orange oak leaf trapped underneath is a nice vignette of a temporary moment in life that can be enjoyed and dwelled upon, but as a photo it is too easy to just see the objects – leaf, door – and move on. Shots like these could benefit from the same vision seen in “Symbiosis of Lime and Lichen” that would frame the scene in a more unique way, making it more memorable.
Zimmerman also had several photos of rocks, most of which could also benefit from being shown in a more abstract way. But there was one in particular that caught my interest, where she incorporated collaged pieces of paper into the photo and drew patterns into them. These additions created a nice push and pull in the space. The piece as I saw it was a little raw, perhaps in the beginning stage of exploring this idea, but it looked like it had a lot of potential and I hope she chooses to pursue it in future works.
Barbara Grad at the Kemper Gallery
The Kemper Gallery typically attracts some pretty high-end work, and I was disappointed to find their showing of paintings by Barbara Grad very bland. Her showing of oil paintings had all the typical elements shared by a vast majority of oil paintings seen today. They are large-ish works with most of the canvases remaining in a safe mid-range size, the color use is primarily bright and saturated, the brush strokes create vague abstract forms with some rooting in geometry, and there are various areas built more densely with brushstrokes while other areas are subdued with thin pale washes of paint. All typical devices, and all used in a very safe manner.
Grad's work is similar to the band Creed. Creed uses all the tried and true devices in the history of rock music and combines them into a safe replication of what has already been done. They don’t take a chance in any direction. They stick to the bare basics of the rock music formula, resulting in a completely boring music group with no flair.
Grad’s paintings are a very static mish-mash of shapes that offer no opportunity for the viewer to discern a rhyme or reason with what they are being presented. The shapes and forms are very generalized, with no attempt at adding definition to them after they are first painted. Even in areas where some level of interest can be found in the layers of lines stacked upon one another, they have no impact because they are floating stranded in the middle of the canvas. If there was some grounding or visual space created for these parts of the paintings to exist in they wouldn’t look so awkward, but instead these attempts at building a structure are surrounded by undertreated canvas, as if she forgot to work the rest of the picture and quickly filled in the remaining space just to have something there.
Her statement claims that the work was inspired by maps her son made detailing levels of video games and aerial topography images. Knowing this, I could detect elements of each in the paintings. There were unmistakable portions of map layouts from Nintendo games and references to topographical lines, but it doesn’t help the work make any more sense. These inspirations are actually so hidden among the general “painting” that I wouldn’t have found them without help, so I think it’s fair to say that considering the meaning of these elements is unimportant to the work.
In an art show, all the pieces work together to form an overall impression. Not every aspect of a theme or concept is going to be present in every work, so it is important that each piece has something to contribute. In Grad’s show the large pieces have very small amounts of things that the viewer might find interesting. Her smaller paintings could help support the larger works by providing small instances of insight into what is happening in the other pieces, but instead they are even more nondescript and generalized, offering very little to the viewer. The smaller paintings are so simplistic they actually border on being decorative, like something you might see for sale in a catalog of office art.
Overall, there is simply nothing in these paintings to distinguish themselves from anything else in the ocean of abstract paintings that exists today. In order to be effective the paintings need to take a risk or depart from the standard formula of abstract oil painting in some way. There needs to be something unexpected about the work, otherwise it will continue to be completely forgettable.
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