Daniel
Chard
Silage Wagon - 1999
acrylic on canvas
42 x 60 inches (106.68 x 152.4 cm)
Daniel Chard During the past ten years I have been experimenting with color and pattern in landscape imagery. Scores of paintings were produced, a few suggesting the character of the new work. Departing from traditional through-the-window-realism, recent paintings present imagined landscapes. The familiar subject matter, released from the structure of linear perspective and any photographic references, is sustained with its own spatial logic. The image is developed with consideration of the landscape illusion and the graphic space, many of the lines and shapes belonging to the picture plane at least as much as they belong to the realistic space. The resulting mix of two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements is the basis for much of the visual effect. The truth or correctness of the space is to be experienced in the phenomena of the completed painting. I have always been interested in painting constructed around the dynamics of the picture plane. Painting has been most interesting to me when the imagery is reinforced with an elaborate understructure. This understructure serves as a context for the image, giving value to visual elements. The context is not simply good composition or good placement. It is more like the "ground" in the "figure and ground" relationship. The "ground" is not the object of our attention. Rather, it allows the "figure" to be seen in a particular way. I work on the context to set things in motion--colors, shapes, and patterns, what would seem to be basic design stuff. At every stage of the painting process, fields, patterns, roads and architecture are reconsidered for the larger context. In the end, the imagery is largely about relationships in graphic space compounded by illusions of dimensional landscape space. These landscapes are a direction or path for my visual thinking. I can see many possibilities for future paintings in the present work, though I am not forcing the present work into the future visions. I allow each painting to complete itself, suggesting its own possibilities in the painting process. I am intrigued by the notion that the paintings are somewhat beyond my grasp. It is the irrational character of the work that keeps me interested. Intuition and imagination guide me through the development of each image. At this point, the painting process requires more faith than understanding. Daniel Chard
Stephen Fox
Distribution Center - 2000
oil on linen
32 x 64 inches (81.28 x 162.56 cm)
Stephen Fox "Our task is not to create more images of light, but to release the light that is trapped within the darkness" - Carl G. Jung "...it is the function of art to open the consumable things of the tangible, visible world, so that the radiance - the same radiance that's within you - shines through them." I continue to be fascinated by the visual and psychological potential of nighttime imagery. The interplay of light and atmosphere within ordinary settings forms the principle language of these paintings. Having worked with landscape for many years, I find myself relying more and more on my own visual vocabulary than on particular references from the outer world. Several of the works in this exhibition have little to do with places which actually exist. Documentary faithfulness means little to me as compared to the opportunities for structure and metaphor that a particular landscape provides. In addition, the human figure has entered my work as a new avenue for exploration. As with the landscapes, I am more intrigued by the mood conveyed and the questions raised than by any specefic interpretation of the depicted situation. Stephen Fox -April, 2000
Franca Ghitti
Other Alphabets: Circle - 1999
wood and nails
98 in. diameter x 10 in. depth (249cm in diameter x 25.4cm in depth)
Franca Ghitti "I see sculpture as an alphabet that tries to set up a lost kind of communication. My work in wood and iron is an attempt to revisit a kind of alphabet I have seen in forgers and in the craft of woodcutters. The signs, notches, knots, and crucibles that are part and parcel of my sculpture represent the specific language of millers,sawyers,smiths and peas-ants:elements that define a non-metropolitan civilization and find intercontinental affinities. I may say that my work involves a projectual representation of the historical layers of my native valley (Valcamonica). The forms I utilize are primary forms, that also function as arche-types of the organization of territorial space. My work seeks to transform a geometrical space into an historical space in which we may perceive the construction of an alternative alphabet of historical memory." Franca Ghitti -April 2000
Roy
Colmer
Keansburg Amusement Park #1 - 1995
type c-print
19.5 x 23.5 inches (49.53 x 59.69 cm)
Roy Colmer My approaches to photography are either conceptual or intuitive. When working conceptually, I prefer to work with sequence and time. On other occasions I select a location and uncover what is there, working intuitively. I now work almost exclusively in color. I find this expands the notion of what may make a photograph. Color has a life of its own and cannot be contained into a formula. Most of my images are stripped to essentials. I attempt to gain the immediate freshness of a first impression. To allow more freedom I preset my camera to a fixed distance and preset the aperture. This allows me to work without thinking of adjustments, or anything distracting while shooting. I hardly ever request permission to take photographs. I feel that the arrangement must be between the photographer and subject with as little interference as possible. I remain unobtrusive when photographing people, and work without too much presence. Using color has caused me to examine subject matter, that I deemed not worthy in my earlier black and white work. Roy Colmer -January 23, 2000
Robert
Brawley
Totem - 2000
oil on panel
18.75 x 14.75 inches (47.63 x 37.47 cm)
Robert Brawley For several years now my main concern has been with still-life paintings of various simple objects in odd juxtapositions. Currently these are rocks, shells, hanging cloth or drapery, jars, old aluminum cans etc. Their arrangement in some way casts the identity of the objects into an enigmatic realm, suggesting transcendence or critique of mind states. The intention is to create a contemplative outlook regarding whatever situation is depicted. While the content of the painting is highly objectified in the depictive sense, it is not so in the interpretive sense. I wish to invite the viewer to draw from their own experience, their own subjectivity to create understanding. I am very interested in the transcendent quality of light and atmosphere. I work from actual set-ups by and large, though on occasion I have utilized some photographic reference. Surfaces and textures intrigue me, as do the qualities of light as it passes over form. The painting technique is rather arduous, being many-layered overglazings with semi-opaque or transparent paint. The image, which begins very roughly, is gradually "focused" with succeeding glaze layers giving more resolution to the image. My own understanding of the image is developed and meshed with its creation, which is to say that I do not understand the image until it has evolved through the hands-on work and constant intuitive evaluation which "pulls" the image to completion. Robert Brawley -April, 2000
Robert
Berlin
Series R - 1999
photo fusion on aluminum
33 x 15 inches (6 pieces overall dimension) 83.82 x 38.10 cm (6 pieces
overall dimension)
Robert Berlin Daguerreotypes, while representing one of the earliest forms of photography, manifest a unique visual quality that remains very compelling to this day. I became fascinated with the depth and luminosity which results from light reflecting off the metal surface and back through the image. This interest led me to experiment with translucent photo-images fused onto metal surfaces. I soon found that the fusion of translucent color with aluminum plate provides an enhanced saturation/intensity that also becomes responsive to the viewing angle. In this present series I deconstruct the image as I search for its essence. On aluminum plates, I record written and painted traces of social and spiritual graffiti by shrouded cultures. Isolated fragments from diverse communities, dislocated from their sources and almost abstract in their presentation, can provide an unusual narrative. For me, these fragments become an iconographic vocabulary that is both foreign and distant yet compelling and intimate. On the gallery wall I arrange the elements of this vocabulary in a larger group as an installation, in order to evoke the intensity, diversity and spirituality of another people. Paradox remains within this visual text that is at once fragmented and whole, silent yet heard. Robert Berlin -April, 2000
This web site was designed and created by REDRUM DESIGNS ©2000 OK HARRIS All Rights Reserved