Luke Gray, Painting on Right Side with Scumble and Brushmarks, 2022, acrylic and screen printing ink on canvas, 27 x 35”
Luke Gray’s intriguing exhibition The Afterlife of Paintings is a meditation on how paintings live on, beyond the private realm of the studio. And in a sense, it is an artist’s enquiry into how he sees the afterlife of his own work, and its relationship to the phenomena of art transformed into a quantum of data projected out into the world.
This series of canvases from 2021-22 is a marked departure from this veteran artist’s previous work. For many years he developed paintings dense with gestural incident, often emerging from passages of darkness. An extended series from the 2010’s featured a grid of spontaneously brushed blocks, like disparate paintings appearing together as if in a digital mash-up.
The works in the exhibition began with painting’s most fundamental starting point, a piece of raw canvas, and an intuitive process. For each painting, Gray selected a few elements: loosely worked rectangles resembling quotations from the artist’s own canvases, painted gestures floating free in empty space, and solid bars of color, recalling components of a minimalist painting.
Luke Gray, Floating Painting with Black and Orange Band on Left Side, and Brushmarks, 2022, acrylic and screen printing ink on canvas, 26 x 24”
Then, by juxtaposing these elements Gray creates for them a new context, a new conceptual space. Suspended in a field of white canvas, the painted rectangles, gestures, and bars are separate from each other, evoking the clarity of design in various print or digital formats. Finally, the elements are further called into question by a line of text that is screen-printed onto the canvas. The text suggests a caption for an image in an article or a wall text for an exhibition.
The combined effect of these interventions launches the individual elements, and the painting as a whole, into an imaginal reality. We are experiencing painting embedded in an actual work of art, and see its possibility of its existing in the world, simultaneously. This approach recalls the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, in which a fictive work of literature become a portal into a labyrinth of speculations about authenticity and existence itself. Gray shares this self-referential combining art and its social context with a number of contemporary artists, such as David Diao and Fred Wilson.
Luke Gray, Homage to Ryder with Floating Black and Yellow Rectangle, Scumble, Brushmarks, and Drip, 2022, 32 x 25”
Through Gray’s work we are seeing painting as both a private and public experience, altered by its presentation, textual information, and the unspoken meanings that are embedded in this process. In this way, the artist posits the contours of a possible “afterlife” as essential to the practice of painting, extending its relevance beyond individual expression into a wider, problematic reality.
Note: This review incorporates a statement that the author wrote for the exhibition.
490 Atlantic gallery is at 490 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY on view from April 9 – May 22, 2022
Robert C. Morgan, Gahae Park, and John Mendelsohn at Studio Artego Gallery
by Thalia Vrachopoulos
Robert C. Morgan, Lissajous 21, 2015-16, acrylic, metallic paints on canvas, 20×20 inches
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, Music Drawing – Rhythm and Variation, 2018 , cut paper, gouache, 24 x 30 inches
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 20th 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.
Gahae Park, Music Drawing-Etude , 2022, cut paper, gouache, 10 x 13 inches
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.
John Mendelsohn, Color Wheel 1, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 21 inches
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.
John Mendelsohn, Gate 3, 2017, acrylic on canvas, silicone, acrylic, colored sand on acetate, 24 x 18 inches
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
Never more stable than a rainbow, 2022, sheer curtain, rope, and curtain rod, variable dimensions
Entering her exhibition at Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto, Sherri Hay confronts us with a simple request: “Let’s not go back to normal.” I admit that the plea triggered an instant compulsion in me, not unlike the response to a host whose house you’ve entered, wishing you to take your shoes off. What did the artist mean by normal, and what is it that we must continue to do? As a gumshoe, I would have to tread where the evidence led me.
Mary Hrbacek, Hanging Suspended, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 40X44″
In her October exhibition at 107 West in New York City, Mary Hrbacek displays her series World Trees, 2015. Consisting of 24 acrylic on linen paintings, the series represents Hrbacek’s engagement and commitment to world sustainability. In a lyrical, evocative manner she accentuates the import of trees’ life-giving properties that allow humans to live and breathe. In this she recognizes that an individual working with the community can make for a real democracy. Hrbacek also realizes that there is a dark side to life and nature, as seen in her work Silver Dark Monarch, 2015 (acrylic on linen, 8×10″) that looks ominous when compared to some of her other tree paintings. Dark Monarch with its pink, black, green and silver tones recalls the withering effects of such an entity’s sovereignty. Hrbacek’s motifs are inspired by trees she came across in her travels to such places as Vermont, Italy, China, Morocco, the Czech Republic, Ireland, France and other places.
Verse 27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them
by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos
Maelee Lee, Genesis, 2016, variable installation, multi channel video 2min. each
Several years ago, for her new series of works, the artist Melee Lee began examining the issue of existence; being, becoming, having become – the world’s, other people’s, her own. This research led her to look at human development in general and more specifically into its issues. Consequently, this series of works involve history, humanity, while looking at diverse ethnic groups as well as the never-ending cycle of existence – life and death, as well as the establishment and demolition of nations.
