Group ShowAs the title ("The inspiration comes from NATURE") of this new, two-part group show implies, one should not visit the exhibition expecting to see landscapes of gentle, rolling hills with a cow here and there. These are all paintings and sculpture that use the realm of the phenomenal as a springboard. Rather than being depicted, nature is respectfully acknowledged as the source in all these works and differing levels of it whisper or burst through. The hint of nature is more easily discernible in some than in others. Up until a hundred years ago, most artists put on their canvas what they saw and their highest celebration of a landscape would be to duplicate a piece of it. Freed from the tyranny of that limitation by first Impressionism and later evolving to total abstraction, the presence of the artist began to intrude more and more. The work in this show is grounded in the tradition of the past but it has arrived, as if by steaming locomotive, to a totally new territory that combines geography with the music of our passions and inventiveness. Joan Snyder's large canvas, Beanfield with Music (1984), is clearly an impression of an expanse of field as rows of sprouting plants might be said to be emerging from the more expressionist depiction of the furrowed ground. The canvas has the order of a section of farmed land but its interest is in putting blocks of greens, black and white down over an undercoating of orange. We're ultimately presented with the solidity of the scene with the fervent joy of brash, thick brushstrokes. The three in Michael Goldberg's large painting, Semaforo Calla Grande (1984), is made up of tighter strokes and is essentially black and white against the much broader brush work and autumn colors of the background. Some geometric models hint at buildings. Again, the evocation of nature is merely an excuse to apply paint to canvas. The artist is more concerned with making visible his impressions, in expressing his emotional reaction to the scene and by doing so inventing a new, visual vocabulary that attunes us to a place where all maps are archaic but the vista sure to be a tourist attraction. Joan Mitchell's gorgeous, two-paneled Cypresses (1979) has even less to do with any scene though we feel firm on the ground before gazing into its space. With a full range of abstract expressionist techniques—dashes, drips, fiery brushstrokes molding surfaces as well as colors together—the painting stands more as an illustration of the most impassioned of Jimi Hendrix's bleeding heart guitar solos than the depiction of cypress trees. Stefan Triffa's large painting, Long Sleep (1985), has the emotional and psychological impact of a cold, rocky coast in the north seas. A luminous, dark central image that dominates the surface seems to throb with the embers of a gothic myth while around it a cooler, rough sea quenches the aura. With two smaller works, Glenn Goldberg's Drawing (1986) and Jean Feinberg's Untitled (1984–5), there's not enough indication given to decipher what in nature is being presented but from both there is a sense of organic reality. We impose our own ideas of what in nature these might suggest but the images presented are content sending out shock waves from a core of measured breath. The show has been evolving and changing in the two times I've seen it and will continue to be altered for the duration. (Arts, April 1986) |