Author: Steve Rockwell

by John Mendelsohn

“What are we looking at and what are we seeing?” That is a question, spoken or not, that pervades the experience of contemporary art. This is particularly true of the sort of art that specializes in eluding obvious imagery and easy explication. 

In Stephen Maine’s exhibition of new paintings, we are confronted by the residue of process, a material memory of what was once there. Maine layers a series of off-printings from plates made with modeling paste, extruded foam, and glue. This template is charged with paint that is then transferred to the canvas, in a process similar to a monoprint. But in this case, in a single painting the template carries color in successive printings, resulting in an image that appears as if in dimensional relief. 

With their saturated colors, the paintings have a kind of psychedelic, ruined glamour, making a painterly virtue out of the necessity of loss of image’s original source. The paintings play with our continual impulse to seek the meaningful signal in the ambient noise, like making out an image from a stain on a wall, as Leonardo noted in his description of pareidolia.  

The question of what we are looking at and seeing in these paintings remains the challenge within these works. They rely on our own need for paintings’ intelligibility – to make sense, even as we are immersed in sensuous intensity. These paintings seem to both stimulate and frustrate this desire, through chaos at a remove, a loss of the referent, an appeal to the grotesque. 

When we talk about Maine’s work, we cannot help but see it in relation to Richter’s early scintillating procedural abstractions, and to Warhol’s degraded silkscreen tabloid images. Into the mix we can add the work of Simon Hantaï, and his method of pliage, painting folded canvas, that when unfurled yields unanticipated results. And even further back are artists who used the stratagems of automatism, the surrealist technique used to bypass conscious control in hopes accessing a portal to the unconscious. This approach informed Pollock’s inscribing the evidence of his physical movements at a liquid distance from the canvas.

All of these artists’ work partakes in a kind of drama wherein the authentic and the automatic continually contend. Maine partakes in this as well, while maintaining a kind of optimistic faith in abstraction’s ability to remain the language of sophisticated discourse, even as it evokes a world in flux, consumed by rupture. 

The question of the artifice of art is ever-present in Maine’s work, since we experience a kind of simulacrum of the real, the gesture that is memorialized. The illusion of authenticity persists, as the work appeals to our craving for the spontaneous and the genuine.

This desire is put to the test by the artist’s work in the exhibition, with three larger and five smaller works. Two of the paintings are from a single template, in changing color palettes. As a whole, the Maine’s paintings here are in contrast to his work from a number of years ago, with their wall-sized scale and floating, anarchic spirit. 

Some of that wildness remains, but a new feeling of organic growth emerges in the branching, linear patterns that structure some of the works. At times, these rib-like elements vibrate in pixilated, buzzing topographies, or alternately devolve into runic entanglements. Also appearing is a new simplicity in a number of the works, with the printed elements announcing themselves with graphic clarity and high-contrast colors on evenly painted grounds.

Stephen Maine: Typologies is at Hionas Gallery, 94 Walker Street, New York from April 21 – May 7, 2022

Robert C. Morgan, Gahae Park, and John Mendelsohn at Studio Artego Gallery

by Thalia Vrachopoulos

The newly opened gallery Studio Artego in Long Island City evidences the increasing de-centralization resulting from globalization and rising rental costs in Manhattan. Their April show featured a three-person exhibition entitled Passion and Ego: John Mendelsohn, Gahae Park, Robert C. Morgan curated by Soojung Hyun. Through the theme, Hyun examines the synergistic effects of the three featured artists’ individual artistic languages. The formal artistic means geometric forms, consideration of light and line are used as thematic foil to tie the artists’ work together. The title Passion and Ego, is defined by Hyun in the online catalogue accompanying the show, as the “sense of tireless dedication of an artist to his work and resultant spiritual fulfillment.” The latter idea is found in the works of the early abstractionists Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Piet Mondrian et al, who were salvationist in character, and sought a common language in their search for spiritual enlightenment.

Morphologically, the exhibit is flawless in its pristine lines and simple installation that complements the abstract nature of the works. The viewer’s eye is not interrupted by any abrupt changes or jarring elements thus, it moves smoothly around the gallery to absorb the show’s coherence. Although the exhibition contains works in different media such as painting, and paper installations they harmonize as a group. 

To begin with, Robert C. Morgan’s abstract pieces are confined to black, maroon, gold, copper, and silver. In this sense, Morgan like the Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian, minimized his color palette and reduced his forms to their simplest essence. But whereas, the latter used primary colors, Morgan’s are tertiary or mixed colors and metallic shades. Morgan’s circles and squares in their architectonic nature and coloration, are closer the Proun paintings of the Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky. Morgan’s forms as seen in Lissajous 21, 2015-16 (metallic paints on canvas, 20×20”) like Lissitzky’s feature shifting axes that offer us multiple spatial perspectives. 

Morgan’s Lissajous also known as a Bowditch curve, refers to a family of curves invented by Nathaniel Bowditch in 1815, that in physics is a graph of a system of parametric equations that describe complex harmonic motion enclosed by rectangular boundaries. Jules Lissajous a French mathematician later sought to develop optical methods for studying vibrations and the resultant waves or ripples/curves they caused. The three artists Morgan, Lissitzky and Mondrian have mathematics in common within their geometricity. While Morgan examines Lissajous curves and their equations, Lissitzky analogized art with the functions and systems of mathematics, and Mondrian used the Golden Ratio to produce harmony and balance in his abstractions. Morgan’s pieces are Minimal as his forms are planned with precision, and immaculately constructed while containing superb attention to detail.

Gahae Park also works with geometric abstraction but her media differ from those of the painters Morgan and Mendelsohn. Park creates what she calls ‘cut-out drawings’ that result in two- dimensional sculptures and installations in paper. Moreover, Park engages with a different subject matter than the other two artists in the show. She focuses on correspondences that “deeply connect with the sound and structure of music.” It was the Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky who considered music as the most abstract of all the arts who at the beginning of the 20^th century corresponded with the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Their interests coincided as the latter was an exponent of atonal music and the first an abstract master. Fascinated by music’s emotional power, and being musically inclined Kandinsky analogized color and sound. Park to whom music evokes abstract space, inspired by these correspondences, produced a new type of space, one that incorporates the Eastern philosophical idea of the void in the Yin/Yang symbol of the Tao Te Ching, a Chinese philosophical text written by Laotzi ca. 400 BC expounding on Taoism. The cosmic duality of these two Taoist energies in nature Yin being the female principle and Yang the male, is believed to be both complementary and opposing simultaneously. As seen in her meticulously cut out paper work Music Drawing—Rhythm and Variation, 2018 (cut paper, gouache, 24×30”), Park allows the negative cut out spaces set at intervals corresponding to musical notes, to play with the positive space in order to produce varied and multi-tonal harmonies. 

Another of Park’s music drawings Music Drawing-Etude, 2022 (cut-paper, gouache. 10×13”) alludes to a piano keyboard while simultaneously to an etude or technical exercise. This idea also corresponds to an artistic experimentation or exploration in the pursuit of resolving a specific formal issue much like Claude Monet’s study of light or Degas’ study of movement. Moreover, Park crosses modalities as her synesthesia produces works that demonstrate correlated patterns that work together through emotional mediation and expression to formulate music to color association.  

The third artist in Passion and Ego is John Mendelsohn who is an abstract painter. One might think that the title of Mendelsohn’s painting Color Wheel 1, 2020 (Acrylic on Canvas, 30×21”) tells it all, but meaning is also imbued by the viewer whose reading of it, enriches the artwork. In an interview with David Eichholtz, Mendelsohn spoke of his series’ possible multiple meanings, mentioning among others Walter Benjamin’s “auratic work”, the wheel of life, floral forms, umbrellas, music of the spheres, etc. Formally, his paintings examine shifting visual occurrences and vision’s optical excitation. Mendelsohn’s Color Wheel series demonstrates the interaction of color resulting in sensations of simultaneous depth and movement. 

Mendelsohn’s Gate 3, 2017 (Acrylic on Canvas, Silicone, Acrylic, Colored Sand on Acetate, 24×18”) maintains viewer interest through its sensuous, painterly surface impasto as well as, its reflective qualities. He accomplishes the latter through his use of varying supports like clear acetate or foil so that, the feeling is analogous to looking through many layers. The contrast between matte and shiny surfaces and painterly, viscosity also help in giving the whole painting an air of mystery. There is also a successful dialogue between the title and the work whose multi -layering suggests a gateway or veiled entryway.

All in all, this show’s success is due to the expertise of the three artists but also to the curator’s choice and immaculate installation technique. The goal of the recent galleries opening outside of Manhattan perimeters is not only to find cheaper rents and bigger spaces, but also to make art available to geographically and ethnically diverse populations. It is worth the extra time to travel from the city if it is to see exhibits such as Passion and Ego.

Passion and Ego: Robert C. Morgan, Gahae Park, John Mendelsohn, Three Person Show: March 15 – April 29, 2022 at Studio Artego, 32-88 48th Street Unit 2, Long Island City NY 11103 www.studioartego.com