Under pressure...maybe once was enough...did I just see what I think I saw?...Statom & Smith can be contenders if they keep it real...Mahinay moves across dimensions...it's brilliant! But who made it?

             At long last First Fridays is back in full swing.  The crowds have yet to return, but most of the venues have once again opened their doors with new work.  And March is an exciting month in itself, but that has more to do with basketball.  In fact, I’m watching a game while typing this, so please excuse me if I interje – WHAT?!  HOW WAS THAT NOT A FOUL?!!  CMON!  Sorry.  Also I should add that I’ve been trying to quit smoking lately, so my moods have been a little off-kilter.  This month’s writings may be a little more rambling and bite than in the past.  Anyways, let’s jump into the First Friday offerings of March.

Jenny Meyer-McCall and Holly Swangstu at the Beggar’s Table




Two panels painted by Jenny Meyer-McCall

 

            All the way back in September, I reviewed some work by Jenny Meyer-McCall at the Leedy-Voulkos for my very first entry in this blog.  That particular show was a group exhibit, and since then I have avoided reviewing group shows because is allowed to show so few pieces.  As I recall, Meyer-McCall had one large multi-panel installation along with three or four other individual pieces, and I was attracted to her inventive and experimental painting techniques.  Unfortunately, my interest in her work was significantly lower this time around.

            However, the context in which I saw her work must be considered in this impression.  It is a natural phenomenon that seeing both the artist’s works together can influence the perception of it, much like the same color swatch can be perceived as a different color when placed against different backgrounds.  The two actually use alternate placement of their pieces to create an even presentation of both their works, so really in reviewing the work it is an impression of the presentation as a whole.



One of Holly Swanstu's nearly identical
pieces



I have never encountered the work of Holly Stangstu before, but it seemed to make sense why these two artists decided to have a show together.  They both work in roughly the same sizes, their works both have similar color palettes, and they are both fixated on using a single device within their work.  Swangstu is more guilty than Meyer-McCall in this arena, with all of her works being strips of fabric arranged on a canvas to form parallel stripes of color.  This description is accurate for all Swangstu’s pieces, the only thing that changes between each one is the size of the canvas, the color of the fabric, and whether the stripes are layered horizontally or vertically. 

By itself this is an interesting idea.  It is not an interesting enough idea to carry a whole piece, much less a whole show, by itself. The pattern that these stripes of fabric create is a great effect that has a lot of potential, but it needs to be used in conjunction with other devices in order to fulfill that potential.  The obvious solution would be to paint or draw on top of this striped surface, it would look nice to have it as a background that emerged and interacted with some foreground imagery.  There is also the option of further sewing on the piece and creating a more complex piece that way.  Or one of Swangstu’s pieces in specific shows some potential by creating a composition through the whole piece by arranging the fabrics so that larger shapes are created by the colors.  Most of the arrangements feel totally random, but in this piece it feels as if there is a purpose to how the fabric is placed, and small touches like that are things that can elevate the work to a more interesting level.   

At any rate something needs to break up the monotony of essentially seeing the same piece over and over.  As they are they feel too much like a stab at achieving spirituality and meditation through minimalism, which should be avoided at all costs.  A vast majority of art that makes that attempt results in the creation of some completely forgettable, un-engaging work.

I brought up the issue of viewing Meyer-McCall’s work in the context of Swangstu’s work because the thing that could not escape my attention in Meyer-McCall’s paintings was how similar the imagery was.  A good many of her paintings use the same marks and imagery that I saw in her larger installation last September, which was groups of small, thickly painted circular shapes clustered against the bottom of the canvas as if succumbing to the force of gravity.  For all I knew before, she had only explored this device once.  But as it turns out it’s a motif she uses way too often, and seeing it next to Swangstu’s pieces makes it impossible to ignore the repetition of this element in the paintings. 

On the bright side, Meyer-McCall shows a lot more willingness to experiment with her device.  The small circular paint daubs are seen in different configurations and settings, and in one instance appear in something close to a landscape.  But it seems that this device is the only part of her work that she has perfected.  Every attempt she makes at either adding to or working outside of the frequent motif looks unplanned and unfinished.  In a large double-canvas painting she embellishes the negative space with some random half-hearted brushstrokes, and pieces that completely abandon the daubs are random assemblages of marks, as if each time she began painting something she changed her mind after ten seconds, and after an hour of doing this called the painting finished.  They simply lack commitment in any area and don’t appear to be an organized effort to express anything. 

Jenny Meyer-McCall and Holly Swangstu show the ability and ideas to make some great works of art, but appear to restrain their work to its current state.  And really that’s a struggle that all artists have to deal with.  Artists are always reaching new plateaus in their work, and there is the temptation to stay and feed of the current success rather than letting the work evolve for fear that it could move in a potentially less-successful direction.  But it’s a risk that must be taken, because repeating the same formula results in stagnant work, and in trying to play it safe that successful formula loses its magic.

Kale Van Leeuwen at the Base Gallery

            The Leedy-Voulkos still hasn’t fully emerged from its winter shell yet.  Half of the upstairs galleries are still closed and what they did have on display wasn’t worth mentioning, but fortunately I took the time to poke around and discover an interesting show in a very unlikely place.  The Base Gallery is accessed by a long narrow staircase at the back of the Leedy-Voulkos, and as far as I’m aware has never had a show worth seeing.  The few times I ventured down that way I was faced with work so amateur I about-faced at the bottom of the stairs and left.  Because of that I rarely bother to check what’s happening in the Base Gallery.  But this time I was rewarded with seeing the paintings of Kale Van Leeuwen in the show “Urban Fairytales.”



"Little Deer in the Big City"
by Kale Van Leeuwen



            Encountering Van Leeuwen’s work in such an inconspicuous place is fitting because descending the narrow staircase can feel a bit like diving down the rabbit hole, and at the bottom are paintings of the city with surreal twists to them.  I want to say that the work is actually paintings, but I can’t be too sure.  At first glance I was sure they were digital photo printouts that had been worked on top of, but a closer inspection of the finer details revealed that there were many brushstrokes within the images.  It could be that he painted what was in the photo on top of the printout to give it a different look, or there is also the possibility that he’s really that good and can emulate the effect of a car blurring from the shutter moving too slowly with paint. 

However he made them, the effect works well because it really keeps you guessing.  Some parts are obviously painted, but in other parts it’s not so clear.  It seems that photography plays a part in the creation of the work, but how big a part, if at all?  It gets you questioning what’s real and what’s not, and it’s a great effect to have in a show where you want to transport the viewer into a fantasy realm like “Urban Fairytales.”

Some of Van Leeuwen’s pieces reference popular fairy tales such as Rapunzel and Alice in Wonderland, and the others are simply scenes of the ordinary and the unusual colliding.  In “Little Deer in the Big City,” a transparent fawn is shown standing in an intersection as a car cruises past.  Not so surreal, but a clip of something you don’t see every day.  In a much more surreal piece, the steel spider sculpture in front of the Kemper Museum is shown walking down the street.  There doesn’t seem to be any overarching message to these scenes.  Instead they come off as individual oddities and daydreams, which works just fine.  Each piece becomes an exploration into a strange and enchanting visual landscape, and the viewer is given enough pieces in a believable space to let their imaginations go to work.

If there is one thing that could improve Van Leeuwen’s work, it would be upping the surrealist elements.  In most of the pieces the viewer is given a more or less regular scene with a single small twist of abnormality, and the pieces are visually compelling enough that there could be many layers to the visual and conceptual warping of these places.  One thing that could be experimented with more is the special relations.  There is no rule that there has to be a standard front-middle-back ground layout, and it would be the perfect opportunity to play with this aspect of the painting in a fantasy-based picture.  And the environments are so rich that there are plenty of opportunities to hide small subliminal tricks in the details.  Van Leeuwen plays with the effect of the glowing lights in the nighttime a lot, but there are other small efforts that could be made to up the strangeness factor in the images and create an environment for the viewer that is believable, but at the same time completely foreign.  The work Van Leeuwen has on display now is a great start in an interesting direction, I only hope that he continues to push his work further in the direction of becoming something truly incredible.

Therman Statom & Kent Michael Smith at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art

Therman Statom

The Sherry Leedy Gallery of Contemporary Art is the kind of place where you usually encounter some heavy hitters.  Not just any run-of-the-mill fool can reach this level of the game.  Showing in a venue like the Sherry Leedy Gallery is an accomplishment in its own right, and it can lull some artists into a state of complacency.  It is possible to feel completely satisfied with the achievement and work just enough to sustain that standing instead of pushing further and reaching for greater heights.  It is at this point that many artists choose to “go commercial” and run out their career producing sterile replications of the same piece for mass consumption. 

            Of the two artists I looked at this month, Therman Statom is in more danger of falling into this trap.  The work he had on display feels as if it is fully actualized, but I have trouble seeing where else it can possibly go.  And this concern in underscored by the fact that there are several pieces in the show that seem to be ineffective tangents off of the main idea, as useless as the extra impractical limbs grown by a species that’s hit an evolutionary wall. 

            Several of Statom’s pieces are glass house structures, which by themselves are very interesting forms.  They are large enough that the viewer can move around them and get a full experience from all angles, and there is an added incentive to do so since parts of the walls are see through.  The reflections of the glass create a dynamic space out of the hard-lined geometric dwellings, and provide a multi-layered environment to explore. 

Within the structures are different objects, mostly made of glass.  These tend to be rather bland objects – glass spheres and bottles, etc. – and the house structures would probably be better off empty than with these cliché objects in them.  By themselves the forms of the houses are something that people can relate to, and they create compelling enough spaces that they invite exploration.  It would almost be better to remove anything that would distract the viewer from analyzing the structure before them and what it means that it was created in this way.  Viewing the houses themselves could raise the following question in the viewers head:  how is it that we feel a connection to this geometric form that is made from a cold, hard, uninviting material?  Or at least if their thoughts don’t delve so introspectively the viewer can at least appreciate the form of the house as it is.  They are fairly unique and clearly well-made.  By themselves they are interesting enough to be remembered and possibly dwelled upon in the future.

There are several different objects placed inside these houses, none of which enhances the piece very well, and the most frequent object used is the cliché glass sphere.  These spheres are very attention-grabbing because they are so different from the angular space that contains them, and distract the viewer’s eyes from looking at the interesting glass forms to something that is more strongly associated with a museum gift shop.  The house forms have a very obvious manufactured feel to them, but they are such uniquely shaped structures that the artist’s hand still lends them a touch of personality.  The spheres on the other hand are generic forms with less character than a bowling ball.

 Statom’s work has obviously come a long way.  His pieces look too refined for him to have started making these things recently.  But it feels like he didn’t know where else to go with a good idea and started sticking crud in them just to change things up a bit.  There is also a very gaudy 5 foot tall ladder form with random glass objects stuck all over it that doesn’t fit anything else that is going on in the show.  It’s as if he decided that he was accomplished enough that he didn’t have to try to impress the viewer anymore, and that any glass thing he turned out would be received without complaint.  Well I feel the need to say something about it, because it’s generic pieces of art like this that end up getting bought by corporations because they’re safe, something that could never truly offend anybody’s taste, and that’s what gets displayed to the public as the current state of contemporary art.  It’s a piece of junk that says nothing to anybody, and even worse, it detracts from the highlights of what could be a really good gallery show.

One of my favorite things about the show is the reference to Mondrian’s paintings in the work.  In the large painting on the wall, large rectangles of primary colors have been worked into the composition and directly reference the work of the modernist painter.  These same rectangles are also seen repeated in the other glass structures of the show.  Yellow and blue rectangles worked into the house structures mirror what is happening in the larger piece on the wall which creates a strong sense of unity between the pieces, and also adds to the idea that the work is analyzing the human environment in the modern age.  The show would be much stronger if it worked to push the use of these devices further and Statom returned all his glass spheres to the museum gift shop he bought them from.

Kent Michael Smith

            Kent Michael Smith has figured out a very sharp aesthetic for his work.  By pouring several layers of a clear gloss resin over a panel he makes some abstract pieces of incredible depth that are far beyond what could be achieved without this method.  The core of his pieces focuses on brightly-colored arrangements of abstract shapes that appear to be inspired by graffiti.  Ordinarily it would be hard to see these compositions as anything but a typographer’s doodles, but the process through which they are created puts these shapes in a context that infuses them with much more vitality. 

            A closer look shows that the shapes themselves are not a single mass but several layered images built on top of each other, and although the space between layers is not drastic it is enough to give a sense of movement and life to the abstraction.  It feels as if it was grown rather than drawn, and leads the viewer into thinking more about the creative process in general than getting stuck on what is seen immediately in front of them.

            The show is a bit monotonous in that all the pieces are essentially the same thing executed with different variations, but they are interesting enough to explore that it’s not a distraction.  It’s also impressive that Smith is able to incorporate typically untouchable elements like glitter into the pieces and make it work seamlessly.  In any other type of work a glitter effect would be just gaudy, but the high-gloss effect of the work masks the glitter and it blends in among the rest of the thin washes and bright blocks of color, which themselves could be unbearable in other circumstances. 

Everything in Smith’s presentation works together, making for a nice show.  I just hope that he doesn’t become too afraid to change what he’s doing in his future pieces, because as of now the work is good, but it would be real disappointing to see a Kent Michael Smith show next year of similar work.  It’s never a good idea to continue playing off the same artistic formula over and over, but it could get old particularly quick in this kind of work that is held together only by the method through which it is made.  If that happens, there won’t be enough clear gloss resin in the world to tone down those streaks of glitter.

Erica Mahinay at Arts Incubator

            The still life is one of the oldest conventions in art, and painter Erica Mahinay has come up with a way    of making it relevant again.  Instead of painting on a canvas, Mahinay uses pieces of frosted plexi-glass as her surface, which gives her some interesting options to work with.  In “Still life with pears” what would ordinarily be a dull painting of some fruit is instead embellished by leaving portions of the plexi-glass unpainted to reveal several ceramic pear cores behind the actual painting.  It wouldn’t necessarily have to be pear cores found behind the piece for this effect to work well, simply breaking up the space using this method is enough to keep the piece from being just another still life. 

Mahinay also has several of the ceramic pieces suspended on the outside of the piece from wires.  If this were done on a traditional painting without the added transparent background it would probably look very silly, and maybe even cliché in a strange way, but with the addition of space behind the piece these frontal objects do not look out of place.  In this show the actual paintings become the middle ground between objects placed in front of and behind the picture plane, and these spatial relationships complete the work with nice visual and conceptual depth.  When we see the painting sandwiched between these two additional planes, we can begin to see the scene as a snapshot in time, with the objects representing a possible before and after of that scene, or at least something from the painting in a different state of being, which is more compelling than looking at fruit on a table. 

But of the two effects, incorporating objects on top of the piece and objects that can be seen behind the piece, I prefer the latter.  Having objects emerge within the image is a very effective way of enhancing the painted image without running the risk of overdoing it.  No matter what you see through the glass, it is still contained within the image and feels as if it is a solid component of it.   But adding objects on to the exterior of the piece must be done delicately, and I’m tempted to say that Mahinay gets a little careless in doing this sometimes. 

Where this effort doesn’t work well is when the added objects don’t feel well incorporated with the rest of the work.  One example is a painting of a dining room table that is split down the middle by a bundle of large hair braids.  The image itself is very good, with the table sitting over a pile of turkey bones that appear underneath the plexi-glass and eventually emerge on the outer surface of the painting.  This effect works well with the painted image and doesn’t come off as overbearing, but then the braids almost become too strong of an element and distract from the rest of the piece. 

I think the real problem with the braids in this case is that they don’t feel grounded.  They hang suspended just above the top of the piece on a small stick, then drape down the rift between the two panels, then fall to the floor in a pile below.  Where are these braids coming from, and where are they going?  What is their purpose and means of existence?  Our brains can make sense of the braids when they are within the picture plane because even though they are very different from the rest of the piece, they feel contained and incorporated into that context.  But having them run through the piece and hang out leaves, excuse the pun here, too many loose ends to deal with. 

If the braids were coming out of the wall, or coming out of a box or other object, or stayed contained within the picture plane, then they would feel like an integrated component of a larger piece.  But as they are they feel incomplete and tacked on, as if Mahinay had an idea for their inclusion in the overall piece but didn’t finish working out the details and left the piece as is for the show.  Another of her pieces that has a jumble of furniture parts piled below it suffers from the same problem of not feeling completely resolved.

But one example where Mahinay lets loose with the sculptural elements and does it well is in the largest piece in the show.  This work features a painting of packing peanuts, moving boxes, and sheets.  It has real packing peanuts seen behind portions of the glass with ceramic packing peanuts fixed on the outside.  This piece is also split by an object, this time a white sheet, but it works much better than the piece with the hair braids because the added object feels completed by being part of a larger network of objects.  In this case the sheet is suspended by twine from a frame higher up on the wall, making a complete circuit that passes through the main portion of the piece. 

It is also visually and conceptually better linked to the work by continuing elements found in the piece beyond the rectangular boundary.  The sheet is filled with the ceramic packing peanut forms, and through it are also strung two teacups like the ones painted into the image.  Unlike the braided hair piece, this work feels like a well-rounded effort at pushing the piece to a new level rather than introducing a three-dimensional element just for the sake of adding something three-dimensional.

Mahinay exhibits some ingenuity in this show.  It takes some mettle to even attempt making work like this, and I hope she continues to work with and refine the same ideas.  She has established an interesting aesthetic that draws from older and slightly ornate room interiors, changes throughout time, and food.  While it’s not entirely clear what is meant through these references, it’s also not that important so long as the pieces work visually.  But perhaps Mahinay would be able to enhance her work by pushing it in a direction where her unusual methods become a means of saying something more specific about the themes she’s working with.

Unknown at the Next Space Gallery – BEST IN SHOW

            This is a little unusual, but I don’t know the name of the artist responsible for my favorite show of this First Friday.  Next Space Gallery is an oddball little space just inside the pale on the far end of 18^th Street, right after the Slap and Tickle Gallery and right before you start wandering through the abandoned industrial landscape by the highway.  I’ve passed by Next Space before, and it seems to be a place that attracts an “outsider art” crowd, or people who love and make art but have never formally studied it.  Work by artists like this can be exciting to see because they are so unrestricted in what they do.  They are not trying to impress anyone or live up to anyone else’s standards.  They are making the work they want to make, and there is a real purity to that.  And this particular time I felt compelled to go in and check out what they had based on the incredibly large and intricate drawing I could see through the front window.



A close detail shot of the above piece



            Next Space Gallery is a gallery only in name.  It’s really a small, dark little building with no easily distinguishable purpose.  On entering there are passages that go to the right and to the left.  To the left was a large room that was apparently not in use, but among the chairs and other items stored in there were several strange drawings on the wall.  The only one I remember in specific looked to be a morbid marker drawing involving Ronald McDonald.  So maybe this room was part of the show and they just forgot to turn the lights on?  I decided not to mess with it and headed back to the other side with the drawing that caught my attention in the first place. 

            It is a very dense colored pencil drawing that from a distance looks like it could be a very detailed illustration of London in the 1800’s, with soft curves of similar-sized squares and rectangles packing the 4’x4’ panel in soft muted color tones.  Then up close it is seen that the whole piece was made of abstract shapes mimicking letters, each being about ½ an inch square.  Each shape is individually outlined and colored with great detail, and the composition is dense enough that it is likely that these symbols were actually used to conceal further drawing underneath.  It would take an unimaginable amount of time to complete this piece.  And there is such a strong sense of order and consistency to the symbols in the drawing and the patterns which they follow that the whole piece was obsessively labored over by the artist.  It is a solid expression of an idea or state of being that I could never achieve or understand myself, and that is what makes this piece truly great.



An extreme closeup look at the piece shown above



            Along the same lines is a piece in the back, but instead of being made of symbols the large panel is a rich tapestry of small lines.  Up close this drawing also reveals the same obsessiveness and care in creating the pattern.  The marks have the feel of being made fairly randomly, but studying the consistency of the marks reveals that they are actually made with quick precision.

            There are the only two other pieces in the show that boast these engrossing “all-over” style compositions, which is understandable because that would probably limit the artist to putting on a show every ten years or so.  The rest of the works on display covered a wide variety of subjects and styles, but they were all great to look at because they each employ some very unusual method of making the image that is executed with perfect precision.  In a set of paintings labeled “Mike Enike” a simple trick of brushing thin white acrylic so that the paint bunches at the edges is used perfectly to create an illusion of a shape similar to that of Mike and Ike candies.  It is simple, but it is done so well and with such precision that it creates a truly dynamic result in the piece.

            I only declare whoever put this show together as an “outsider” artist based on the off-beat nature of the space it was shown in, the lack of style and subject continuity through the pieces, and how unconventional the work is.  If this person received any training as an artists, then they are an incredible genius because they were able to shed any trace of indoctrination or conventionality they may have received.  What makes this show so good is its gritty purity.  It is actually art for the sake of art, and there is a humble genius in how far the simple ideas that provide the basis for these works is taken.

Short month, short review...the Jodi Lightner Code...taking a fresh look at common scenes...go big or go home

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. 



"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.  

No January Reviews

Unfortunately, I have to be out of town for this month's First Friday openings, so there will be no reviews.  But I do plan on being back in full effect for February, so check back then!  And also, don't forget to visit my other site, The Print Perspective, to read about new and interesting developments in the world of printmaking.  Happy new year!

-Matt Kuhlman

And then there were none...all I want to do is have some fun at the Beggar's Table...toys in the attic at the Belger...Bill and Ted's excellent bogus journey...serenity now!

          I’ve never been to a First Fridays during the winter months, and now I know why.  It seems artists, like many other animals, hibernate during this time.  I wandered the deserted streets of the Crossroads trying in vain to find a show to review, but at almost every gallery I’d either seen the show already or determined that I couldn’t find much to say about the current show.  So this month’s entry will be a bit of a departure from what I’ve been trying to do here, and it’s possible I’ll be taking January, and maybe February, off from reviewing until the showings pick up again.  Plus I’ll be really busy with my project site for a while, so be sure to keep up with The Print Perspective.

Taryn Leigh and Jeanette Powers at The Beggar’s Table

            One of the only new shows up this month was a two-person show at The Beggar’s Table Gallery, which was a combination of many small, quirky drawings by Taryn Leigh and a handful of large paintings by Jeanette Powers.  Leigh’s work occupied the front of the gallery and was accented by collections of animal bones, feathers, a stuffed and mounted raccoon, and other odds and ends.  The objects share a lot with Leigh’s work in that by themselves, each bone or feather may be somewhat interesting but not remarkable, but when it is part of a collection of similar items it is much more interesting than by itself. 

            Every drawing in Leigh’s show is very similar: they are all pen drawings, occasionally accented with a dash of color, on chipboard, in wooden thrift-store frames smaller than 8”x10” and painted green.  Each image features a human figure with an animal head of some sort, and what really makes the show fun to look at is that it seems that no pose or animal was repeated.  There is also a humorous element to most of the images.  Together, these qualities make the viewer interested in moving through the whole show and taking each piece in. 

            Ordinarily the choice of materials might have bothered me, but the show was plain and simple on so many levels that it felt complete and worked well.  Her drawing style is similar to doodling.  It doesn’t appear that a lot of time or thought is spent on each drawing, but rather the focus is on getting the idea down with direct, simple lines using a ballpoint pen and quickly coming up with a new idea to draw.  It is a fun show to see, but still, when I see work done on non-archival material I can’t help but think how decomposed it will look two years from now.

            Jeanette Powers’ paintings are not as thematically unified as Leigh’s pieces, but share many qualities in common with her portion of the show.  Some of the paintings attempt to approach the subject realistically, while most of them fall into the same day-dreamy realm of doodling.  Caricatures of human figures are mixed with text, nonsensical objects such as flowers with eyeballs, and other figures.  She clearly demonstrates the ability to realistically render the figure in three of the paintings, but in the others opts for a less-structured approach, resulting in what happen to be the more interesting images. 

The “unrealistic” paintings lack refinement in color and rendering, but you can tell that some soul was put into making it.  It is possible to feel a sense of the artist’s personality and emotions in the work, which can often be more valuable than the ability to render something cleanly.  And I should clarify that in calling Powers’ paintings unrefined I’m only referring to the brushwork and the color choice, which is very bright.  Using paint straight out of the tube can work in specific cases, but overdoing it gives the painting a gaudy look, similar to a child’s crayon drawing.  The one element that keeps these works afloat for me is her inventiveness in creating the images.  I noticed on one piece that showed five women gathered together that the pattern in the background was actually patterned paper collaged onto the surface.  The lines of these shapes are then carried down through the figures, making the image much more thought-provoking to look at than if it lacked this element.

Leigh and Powers do not appear to be career artists that regularly show in galleries, and that is why I like First Fridays.  The full spectrum of shows can be found, from high school artists to nationally established artists, and shows like this one provide something fun and different from the usual gallery show.

KCAI in 3D

            KCAI in 3D has been on display at the Belger Arts Center for a while, and while I thought it had some quality work I avoided reviewing it because it is a group show.  All of the artists in the show are graduates and/or faculty of the Kansas City Art Institute, and what I find nice about the show is that there are so many different approaches used in the sculptures.  Some schools push a certain style or concept in the work that comes out of it, but that does not seem to be the case here. 

            The most attention-grabbing piece in the show is a bull sitting on a table strewn with broken china.  What makes the work attention grabbing is that walking into the room all you see is the head of the bull mounted on a partition.  Then as you walk back into the space you realize that the rest of the bull and the piece is on the other side.  It is an interesting surprise, but I think the reference made is too straightforward.  Bull in a china shop is a common expression, but what is the artist trying to say through this reference?  Aside from the surprise factor, is there a reason why the bull is sticking its head through a wall?  I can’t think up any good answers to these questions, and if the piece was displayed without the surprise of most of it being concealed it wouldn’t have many redeeming qualities.  

            Some other work in the show that immediately grabs your attention is a series of three-dimensional portraits by Paul Anthony Smith that poke their heads away from the wall and peer towards the viewer.  Their “frame” is styled after the picture windows around the presidents on paper money, and indeed Abraham Lincoln, Obama, and other stately looking characters are the ones portrayed in the sculptures.  The style works very well in creating a sense of these being old artifacts with a Victorian era feel to them. 

            The piece that brought the series together for me was an old, distressed version of one of the portraits that had been broken into pieces, the shards left falling on the floor beneath it.  It moves the work beyond just creating an object to creating a scene that the viewer can experience, and also communicates an idea of history constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed that seems to be confirmed by the other pieces.

            On the topic of construction, I really enjoy the four sculptures by Keith Whitecloud Simpson.  His work is the most modestly-sized of the show with each piece standing not much higher than a wine bottle, but they are very intricately detailed works that juxtaposed the human form with construction scaffolding and armature.  They could be interpreted as either a statement of building icons and identities for ourselves, the hollowness of cultural icons, the influence of modern society on the development of the human, or a number of other things.  The exact meaning doesn’t really matter though, because Simpson has chosen imagery that is universally understood and executed it beautifully.

            “Ruin” by Terry Karson interestingly follows a construction-related theme, but does it in monumental scale.  Using discarded chipboard from beer packaging he constructed three ten to twelve foot tall pillars that, from a distance, appear to be only a tarnished white color.  A closer inspection reveals what the forms are made of.  The first thing it brings to mind is that alcohol is a cornerstone of society and the economy, yet also a major source for societal destabilization, leading to ruin. 

There is also the fact that a commonly recycled material was used to make the work.  Are we all recycling with the intention of saving the earth, but only perpetuating a system of production and consumption that will destroy the earth no matter how much we recycle?  Possibly.  The main thing that evokes the idea of referencing recycled material is that the forms themselves resemble compacted bales of recyclables.  Perhaps he thinks that these are the best things that our society has to offer, and hopes that environmentalism will be the one legacy that will transcend us.  At any rate, they are simple forms, but I find them interesting to inspect and think about.

From the Melting Pot into the Fire: Contemporary Ceramics in Israel

            Ceramics are not typically the kind of work I find exciting.  When I hear the word ‘ceramics’, I think of plates and coffee mugs.  And when I hear the term ‘ceramic art’, I think of something that maybe my mom or grandmother might drag me to at some folk museum in central Missouri.  If you have similar impressions of ceramics this show is a must see, because these Israeli artists do things with ceramics that I could never imagine. 

            A lot of the works dealt with water, and two of my favorite pieces were among these.  One piece featured several house forms floating in a tank of water, freely suspended and able to be moved in any direction at any time.  This is simply a clever idea that has a clear message.  I knew that the artist was expressing an idea of home as a transitory place without even reading the statement.  There is something about the houses being self contained but not permanently stationed that evokes this idea.  Perhaps it’s because I have trouble staying put myself.  It would be nice to see a work like this executed on a grander scale, maybe with a larger pool of water or with some currents being created, but nonetheless it is an interesting, inventive piece.

            Perhaps my favorite piece of the show was “Moat” by Ronit Zor.  From a distance of more than six feet, “Moat” appears to be nothing more than a set of ceramic panels mounted on the wall that descend slightly to the right.  But up close you find that the panels are actually narrow, hollow vessels filled with water and enhanced with small structural-looking wires and sticks.  In his statement, Zor says that “Moat” references the ancient aqueducts, and that while it delivers life-giving water it also creates a physical barrier between places.  Dualities are always great sources for work, and Zor expresses his ideas in an elegant way.

            Some of the other great pieces in the exhibit showcase the power of subtlety in visual art.  Ceramic seems to be a great media for doing this because it is all one tone and relies on the lighting to create contrast.  There are very few unexciting pieces in this show, and it’s pretty incredible to see so many diverse results come out of the same medium.

Perceptions of Time: Examining the Past, Present, and Future at Arts Incubator

            The Cocoon Gallery at the Arts Incubator has a small group show of works that examine the concept of time.  Sarabeth Dunton-Diamond chose to approach this topic by creating works similar to a comic book or storyboard.  Two of her pieces look as if they use illustrations from old instruction manuals for the source material.  In one a woman installs a set of shelves on the wall, and in the other a man breaks apart a rock to extract some smaller, unidentifiable piece from it.  These images consist of 5 picture cells each, and what makes them interesting is the amount of precision involved in creating them. 

The 5 cells are borderless, with the negative space being filled in by short, repetitive marker strokes that create a striped pattern across the images.  The figures and objects are drawn in ink and show a great amount of skill in drawing them.  And these ink figures and marker-patterned background fill the space to create a perfectly clean square on the page.  What is also nice about the marker strokes is that they create a visual rhythm that carries through the work, so it is almost possible to feel a passage of time through the images with each stroke of the marker representing a moment in time. 

This marker pattern is also present in her main contribution to the show, a series of more than 75 roughly 5”x5” drawings depicting three different series of alterations of the same starting image.  On the far left of each progression is a single rock form in the middle of the paper.  The first one is slowly eroded by other geometric forms, which then becomes smaller to the point of almost vanishing in the final frame.  In the second progression the rock becomes smaller as other small pebbles appear around it, until the large rock is finally gone and the frame is completely filled with small pebbles.  In the third the rock sprouts crystal formations around it before eventually being reduced to a small pile of dust. 

There are several things that work well in these drawings: the idea of several different outcomes from a single starting point, the progressions change reference very universal principles such as growth, erosion, and destruction, and these progressions create a good rhythm by not heading in only one direction.  The second series where the rock turns into many pebbles is the most linear, but in the other to there is a climax of growth or change somewhere in the middle, at which point the change moves towards the fading out of the objects.  These, too, are very nicely drawn, and in two of the progressions the marker lines take on a new role by creating patterns towards the end.  In all it is an interesting piece to look at that makes you want to see every panel in it. 

Another artist in the show, Diane Henk, has some pieces that are hard to engage with.  They are primarily made of drafting film, which is a thin, frosted-looking sheet of vellum, and most of them consist of several layers of this material with subtle marks and sewing incorporated into them, stapled directly onto the wall.  If these pieces were framed it could be a little easier to enjoy them, but with their appearance being so naked on the wall they are not much more interesting than stapling a plain sheet of paper to the wall. 

In some portions a small rectangle roughly the size of a single line of text is cut out to reveal a layer of plain drafting film beneath, and through the top layer there are lines that seem to indicate text.  I can imagine that the idea is something related to history and information being lost in the modern world, with these nearly blank documents that are void of information except for faint reminders of what was once recorded remaining, but that’s really straining my imagination to come up with that.  The overwhelming sense of the work is that it looks and feels like something that would be encountered in an office, not the most thought-provoking environment to reference, and because the pieces appear to be so plain and minimal it is easier to pass by them than to contemplate them.

She also has a larger installation consisting of several small square pouches of the same drafting film that have shredded paper in them.  This goes along with the idea of losing information in a modern business environment by displaying destroyed information, but again, the presentation does not invite the viewer to think about what it means.  It is arranged in a grid with all the same sized pouches, all appearing to have relatively the same contents.  Including some color into the contents of the pouches might have made it more intriguing, but they are as minimalistic and bland as the smaller pieces. 

Ana Maria Hernando at the Kemper Gallery

            One artist who knows how to use paper well is Ana Maria Hernando.  Her show has been on display for a few months, and I don’t have much to say about it other than it is amazing.  She has many framed works that resemble mandalas or flowers, and they include many patterned cut paper forms that rise away from the piece adding a third dimension to the work.  However, the main attraction of the show is a large installation in the middle of the floor with fabric flower forms among glass discs with floral imagery on them.  There is a strong sense of spirituality and nature in the work.  I makes me think of Buddhism a lot by using similar devices, with the floor installation resembling a pond or stream with lotus flowers in it, and the framed images looking like mandalas that also incorporate lotus images.  I doubt that Buddhism is the source of inspiration for the work because it is not a popular religion among Spanish speakers, but regardless of the source the work is great and should not be missed.