Altered Logistics: Redux

by D. Dominick Lombardi, Curator

Perception becomes surreality.

The first exhibition of “Altered Logistics” was subtitled “Contemporary Collage and Appropriation Art.” It was co-curated by Max Tuja (aka: Max-O-Matic) and held in 2023 at SUNY Cortland/Dowd Gallery in Cortland, NY. The selection of art back then stemmed from our passion for collage in all of its forms and philosophies, which in turn became the main focus of the original exhibition.

For this latest version of the exhibition “Altered Logistics: Redux,” I continue the emphasis on collage as it best describes the method of combining previously unrelated elements that form a new message, emotion or narrative. This can be easily seen in eleven of the sixteen artist’s works in “Altered Logistics: Redux.” In addition to these eleven artists, I have selected five artists that focus more on that moment of change, when the cognitive reprocessing of intake and altering strikes. In addition to these two sides of the general concept, “Redux” has both analog and digital examples of art, allowing me to continue the international take on the subject. As a result, this exhibition ends up being a complex visual experience, and one that I hope brings new insights and inspiration to all that see it.

Erick Baltodano, Unremastered #9, 2020, paper collage digitized, 30.8 x 23.2 inches
Erick Baltodano, Unremastered #9, 2020, paper collage digitized, 30.8 x 23.2 inches

Beginning with the more collage leaning creators who expand the concept of logistics is Lima, Perú based Erick Baltodano. Baltodano boils down his method and message to its most basic elements while challenging our understanding of just what consciousness entails. Whether it stems from a knockout punch in the boxing ring, or our relationship with the more mundane physical day-to-day world, Baltodano shifts his focus to that transitional space between dimensions, thus shifting our understanding of time-based reality.

Joel Carreiro, B2fz8, 2021, milk paint and heat transfer on panel, 18 x 24 inches
Joel Carreiro, B2fz8, 2021, milk paint and heat transfer on panel, 18 x 24 inches

New Yorker Joel Carreiro’s multicultural menageries of heat transferred images from fine art and design books are a mesmerizing reshuffling of our global visual history. From a distance, Carreiro’s art looks like a colorful and compelling mass of minutiae with no specific reference. Up close, snipits of vaunted visuals known and new emerge quickly, blending together to form odd connections and jazzy juxtapositioning that constantly alters our own understanding of reshaped perceptions.

Cless, Palomas y Conejos, 2018-2020, hand-cut paper on a found magazine sheet digitized, 21.5 x 16 inches
Cless, Palomas y Conejos, 2018-2020, hand-cut paper on a found magazine sheet digitized, 21.5 x 16 inches

Cless, an artist based in Valladolid, Spain, focuses on representing the five senses to create individual portraits that appear to be more alive than any representational image would suggest. Cless attains this by breaking the facial planes in key areas to extend or emphasize their reach. As a result, the Surrealistic aspects of his art enables the artist to introduce multicultural elements, as the once individual portraits now become open ended and more broadly interpreted, depending on the individual viewer’s own experiences.

Don Doe, The Yin of Suspenders, 2024, oil on canvas, 23 x 17 inches
Don Doe, The Yin of Suspenders, 2024, oil on canvas, 23 x 17 inches

Brooklyn based Don Doe alters his logistics with fractured elements as well, only in this instance the artist is more focused on the pressures and absurdities of body image and gender roles across time. Doe accomplishes these vastly important subjects by collaging together loosely related visual references from a litany of magazines, and finding just the right combination of segmented images. When combined, his art produces a challenging take on society’s built-in tendency to distort and derange.

Yeon Jin Kim, Plastic Jogakbo #14, 2023, Plastic and thread, 42 x 61 inches
Yeon Jin Kim, Plastic Jogakbo #14, 2023, Plastic and thread, 42 x 61 inches

New Yorker Yeon Jin Kim puts a contemporary spin on the art of traditional Korean Jogakbo with her stitched together found plastic sheets. Using mostly from shopping bags and decorative packaging, Kim’s art is both visually compelling and socio-environmental, leaving viewers with much to think about regarding the time we live in. Does endless labeling, branding and advertising alter our decision making? Is it sinful/wasteful to fall into the trap of the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag? Or is the artist making a statement about understanding an altered individuality in a time when more and more of us are becoming logistically tribal?

T. Michael Martin, Rat-a-tat-tat, 2024, mixed media collage on paper, 18 x 16 inches
T. Michael Martin, Rat-a-tat-tat, 2024, mixed media collage on paper, 18 x 16 inches

Kentuckian T. Michael Martin draws our attention to the prevalence of the machine, especially the ones that get us from place to place, compute, keep us focused or watch our every move. The time of finding our own way has long been obliterated from all sides as we bounce from point to point like a pinball in a world where we have lost too much control over our own devices. On the other hand, Martin’s art puts things into perspective in more ways than one, as he carefully coordinates color and movement in his compelling and contemplative compositions.

Max-O-Matic, Memory (14), 2023, paper collage digitized, 35.5 x 27.5 inches
Max-O-Matic, Memory (14), 2023, paper collage digitized, 35.5 x 27.5 inches

Based in Barcelona, Spain, Max-O-Matic shows an altered state that includes two distinctly divergent worlds crossing paths without canceling the other out. The key alteration is aesthetics, followed closely by the socio-political aspects of today’s unleashed mixed-beliefs. As a result, Max-O-Matic shows how a relatively direct method can change the flow of logistics visually as two points of view collide and somehow coalesce, while enhancing the strength and meaning of both.

Kevin Mutch, Legend of St Francis, 2024, digital painting, 36 x 25.7 inches
Kevin Mutch, Legend of St Francis, 2024, digital painting, 36 x 25.7 inches

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada resident Kevin Mutch alters our thinking in a whirlwind of subjects from creationism to creativity. He gets to the heart of each issue with a flair for the dramatic and an understanding of the narrative that may remind some of the art of the Renaissance, while the depth of his imagery, and the presentation of his thought process is more than modern. There is also humor in these works, a feeling that life is a playing field for one’s imagination, a way of entertaining oneself. In the end, it is Mutch’s unique ability to communicate complex thoughts that move us past logic and belief.

Margarete Roleke, War and Religion, 2016, light box with lenticular and painted toys, 21 x 16 x 7 inches
Margarete Roleke, War and Religion, 2016, light box with lenticular and painted toys, 21 x 16 x 7 inches

Margaret Roleke of Connecticut addresses the general understanding of such broad subjects as war and religion, and moves these topics into an arranged state so we can see how they relate. Controlling people’s rights and beliefs, and conquering new lands are, of course, a big part of it. With Roleke’s art, we are reminded that in order to motivate the masses, one must control minds and bodies to alter the logistics. Wars don’t happen and religions can not be established without the masses, and without the ability to control thoughts and ethics in some way or form.

Lydia Viscardi, Social Climate, 2021, acrylic and collage on wood panel, 84 x 42 x 1 ¾ inches
Lydia Viscardi, Social Climate, 2021, acrylic and collage on wood panel, 84 x 42 x 1 ¾ inches

Lydia Viscardi of Connecticut brilliantly mixes metaphors that both dig deep and expand exponentially. Using both the familiar and the otherworldly, Viscardi presents a new take on how we develop as human beings, how we cope with life’s ups and downs, and where we are and what we may believe in. In the end, it’s about that sweet spot between heaven and Home Depot, being grounded or lost, or pining for some place just out of reach, where fantasy and reality coalesce.

Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, Looking Everywhere, 2023, oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches
Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, Looking Everywhere, 2023, oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches

Brooklynite Cecilia Whittaker-Doe reinvents the concept of the landscape, altering color, proportion, placement and logistics. In so doing, she reveals a multi-dimensional field where fractured vistas are repositioned in a semi-kaleidoscopic way that alters any sense of gravity or physics. Like a dream, we are presented with a disjointed narrative that is somehow pulled together by a thread, edging in continuity and clarity.

Serdar Arat, For Piranesi, 2019, acrylic on wood, 35 x 15 x 5 inches
Serdar Arat, For Piranesi, 2019, acrylic on wood, 35 x 15 x 5 inches

From the experience of change, or when the moments of cognitive processing of space and time strikes there is Serdar Arat of New York. His art alters our conception of flow that architects depend on, and how we perceive our own movements in both familiar and foreign lands. In Arat’s wall reliefs there is also that distinctive spiritual side that comes from the element of antiquity, especially in the displaced details. It’s that familiar feeling of the passage of time, that experience of seeing, breathing in and touching an ancient or past world for that matter, that sticks with us forever, altering our understanding of just who we are in the grand scheme of things.

Vincent Dion, Step One, 2023, acrylic and aggregate on wood panel, 84 x 48 x 2 inches
Vincent Dion, Step One, 2023, acrylic and aggregate on wood panel, 84 x 48 x 2 inches

Connecticut artist Vincent Dion uses a very familiar symbol, the Color Vision Test, to get his message across. From the intense written reality of “I ADMIT I AM POWERLESS OVER ART AND MY LIFE HAS BECOME UNMANAGEABLE” to the benignly humorous “COLORFIELD,” Dion informs us that being an artist is both a blessing and a curse. And like artists who have used text in the past to make their thoughts known, Dion relies on the viewer’s own personal experiences and the thoughts that ensued to be tapped and adjusted, altering minds away from the preconceived to the angst of the artist.

Paul Loughney, Pandering Spirit, 2022, collage on panel, 11 x 8 x1 inches
Paul Loughney, Pandering Spirit, 2022, collage on panel, 11 x 8 x1 inches

Brooklynite Paul Loughney’s logistical bent is more about seeing and processing, and how we may alter our conclusions given change in circumstance. Loughney’s art reveals the different ways we ‘see’, and how those sights seep in solid then, dispel into the far reaches of space. There is also the presence of the collective unconscious here, or maybe it’s just how we process seeing as we filter and form visual information moment to moment, day to day and year to year.

Creighton Michael, Frequency, 2011, oil, acrylic, digital transfer on convex panels, 24 x 72 x 2 ½ inches
Creighton Michael, Frequency, 2011, oil, acrylic, digital transfer on convex panels, 24 x 72 x 2 ½ inches

Creighton Michael of New York brings us directly to the point of perception, that nano second when light and dark first enter the retina and are translated by the brain. Light comes in waves, the processing of that information has to be deciphered and compartmentalized otherwise we can not function successfully. So we must alter and logically implement what we perceive around us and Michael’s art reveals those subtle changes that are normally imperceptible, showing us the beauty of what we are missing.

D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 118, 2022, oil and alkyd on canvas, 15 ½ x 18 inches
D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 118, 2022, oil and alkyd on canvas, 15 ½ x 18 inches

In my own work, there is a fascination with the theme of the exhibition, and how that may change the appearance of the person who is experiencing Altered Logistics on the brain. Done in a Pop Surreal, dark comedic way, I tend to lean aesthetically, more toward the strangeness of Lowbrow art to get my point across. I also rely heavily on mental image flashes that I believe come from the collective unconscious. I am based in New York State.

Altered Logistics: Redux will be featured at the Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University, Murray, KY, from August 26 to September 20, 2024.

At Home with Collector Flavio Belli

by Roy Bernardi and Jennifer Leskiw

When you enter the home of Flavio Belli, you are instantly surrounded by his lifetime collection of art. Everywhere you look there are paintings, textiles, drawings, prints, collages, works on paper and photography. Ceramics, sculptures and tiles adorn table tops and shelves. It is an unexpected surprise to see such a vast and varied collection, truly a lifelong passion of collecting.

Flavio Belli is a multi-faceted individual. He is an artist, curator, art consultant, and a partner in a new gallery called Tarantino Belli, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  

Flavio Belli sitting in his living room in front of his wall of strategically placed portraits
Flavio Belli sitting in his living room in front of his wall of strategically placed portraits

There is so much to see and process we wonder where to begin our conversation. We are impacted by the dizzying array of portraits on the wall directly behind the sofa in the living room. Numerous eyes gaze upon you reminiscent of old stories and recollections of allegories of each procurement, the arrangement constantly changing to Flavio’s inclination.

So, when and how did this passion for collecting art begin? 

Flavio’s grandparents owned Angelo’s Restaurant in downtown Toronto from 1920 to 1958. The restaurant was frequented by many artists from Frederick Varley who was a member of the Group of Seven to the likes of Harold Town and celebrities like Boris Karloff, Lucille Ball, Edward G. Robinson and even Ernest Hemingway. Beginning in 1960, Flavio’s father opened Old Angelo’s on Elm Street. Mr. Belli senior was a lover of art and became an avid collector of art books. From time to time, Mr. Belli held art exhibitions in the restaurant consisting of paintings hung on the walls. It was in the collection of his father’s art books that Flavio became acquainted with a book on the work of Chaim Soutine and fell in love with the work and art. Such was the environment in which Flavio grew up.

The walls of Flavio's bedroom and hallway
The walls of Flavio’s bedroom and hallway

In 1960, Rick McCarthy was a student at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. One of his first exhibitions consisted of six landscape paintings, rich with impasto and bold brush strokes and was held at Angelo’s restaurant. It is here that Flavio became acquainted with the artist. Flavio started to compare the work of Soutine to the work of McCarthy. Flavio was ten years old at the time and was enamoured by the thickness and paint application on the surface of each work. An illustration within a book could not do justice to such a technique.

As it turns out, Flavio’s first piece of art was a Rick McCarthy landscape painting from that grouping held at his father’s restaurant many years before. With all of these influences around him, and the acquisition of a McCarthy painting, Flavio decided he wanted to be an artist. And so the journey began.   

What is your favourite art work in your collection?

It’s like eating candy… and asking which one you like best? A Greek tile purchased in 1972 is one of Flavio’s favourite pieces. The work of Brian Kipping is another favourite of Flavio’s collection. He knew Kipping and exhibited his work and subsequently purchased four from the artist. Today he owns 10 paintings by Kipping, who passed away in 2007. 

What is the highlight for you when collecting?  Is it the search or the acquisition? 

I would say neither. The highlight of collecting art is for the love of art, the integrity in a work, the way it’s handled, the story behind it and the artist’s focus. 

There’s always a story behind a work of art. How it was acquired? How was the work created or what were the circumstances around it? What history lies behind the work? Were there encounters with the artist’s and in part, the artist’s story of his or her life. The struggles, and triumphs?

Flavio standing next to his collection of artifacts acquired over the years
Flavio standing next to his collection of artifacts acquired over the years

Flavio has been collecting for many decades but there is one story that is his favourite. It begins on a day when he was walking along Queen Street West taking in the many galleries on his walk. Flavio loves to look at art and also the prices of art. He remembers walking into Propeller Gallery and having a look around. On his way out, the woman at the desk told him there was a student show at the back of the gallery and that he should check it out. It was a third year OCAD illustration show. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a work by a young artist by the name of Kieran Brent. It had such a physical effect on him that he knew he had to have the piece. When asked the price, he was told it was $400 but, the work couldn’t be purchased as the piece was going to be exhibited at an OCAD exhibition. Nothing was for sale.  However, the artist was going to be at the gallery the next day. Flavio told the woman to tell Kieran that he was purchasing the piece and was going to leave a deposit of $200.

Flavio went back the next day to meet Kieran and pay for the remainder of the sale. As it turns out Kieran’s self-portrait won first prize at the OCAD exhibition and the image was used on a poster promoting the show. Since that time, Flavio and Kieran have become good friends, and Flavio now owns seven self-portraits and a major still-life painting by the artist.

Flavio Belli and life imitating his art collection
Flavio Belli and life imitating his art collection

Flavio has made many good friends with artists that he has in his collection. As a true collector, Flavio likes to support artists.  If there’s talent, he tries to help promote them. He doesn’t believe in buying out of pity or charity but, if an artist is struggling and the work has integrity, he’ll purchase several works.

If you had unlimited funds which artist or artists would you like to own? 

Well if I had unlimited funds to buy any art work I wanted, I would purchase Jack Chambers “Sunday Morning #2”. Chambers has the ability to represent reality as accurately and authentically as possible. I’m a huge fan of Chambers, as well as Graham Coughtry. I can really relate to Coughtry’s semi abstraction works of bodies floating on the canvas and of course Andy Warhol whom I can empathize with.

A short video of Flavio Belli speaking about artist Zac Atticus works in his collection may eventually be accessed here.

At Face Value: Station Independent Projects

by Steve Rockwell

Amy Hill and Andrew AO1
Amy Hill and Andrew AO1

From the outset, by titling their exhibition “At Face Value,” the curators Robert Curcio and Leah Oates put into play a dynamic tension between appearance and subtext, the spoken message and the unsaid meaning of what is presented. Amy Hill evokes the ghost of a 500 year-old porcelain complexioned Ginerva de Benci, a Florentine painted by a youthful Leonardo da Vinci. Her own treatment of it might be of a museum-attending New Yorker with political views who is into Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. 

Hill’s work contrasts the Andrew Owen AO1 hybrid portrait of model Winnie Harlow. Its digitally-generated spokes of eight images funnel to the singularity of a kaleidoscope of sex, gender, and ethnicity. As an artificially-generated construct transcribed from real life, it hints at the trans and post-human, but is a beauty in its own right, nevertheless.

Arlene Rush, Chambliss Giobbi, and Claudine Anrather
Arlene Rush, Chambliss Giobbi, and Claudine Anrather

The digital “Twins” photo of Arlene Rush commemorates a turn in the genetic transit of boy, girl, and parent as eerie cloning from a single egg into identical parts. The articulation of sexual distinction is achieved through the tailoring of clothing to shape anatomy. Hand-holding siblings raise their free hands in a kind of benediction to a possible new birth, the bannister before them suggestive of a crib. The fingers of the hand of the sister overlays the image of the mother bride on the wall behind them as a confirming gesture of attribution. The expressed moment is at once, intimate, lovely, and touching.

Chambliss Giobbi places the viewer on their back looking up, as if waking from a film noir delirium. The ceiling fixture behind the shoulder of the besuited man serves a hypnotic eye in the sky probe to signal the continuation of an interrogation or treatment. Where it lands is unclear. Giobbi’s melted Crayola technique captures an aura of Lucien Freud psychological disquiet. As a “votive” artist homage to the real thing, it tucks nicely under your pillow.

In her own words, Claudine Anrather inhabits “an unsteady world, figures freed from time and space,” a Jungian netherworld where  the animus and anima, the masculine and feminine sides of the personal psyche play out their dialectics. Since her subjects here have since given up their ghosts, her portraits of black trans women achieve a rebirth through a channeling of their archetype. Anrather’s painted effigies waft into a visible present from the immaterial timeless.

Dana Nehdaran, D. Dominick Lombardi, and Marcy Brafman
Dana Nehdaran, D. Dominick Lombardi, and Marcy Brafman

The intimate self-portraits of Dana Nehdaran transcend mechanically-transcribed visual journals, these being just one of several series that adhere to themes consistent with “At Face Value.” The tension between past, present and future against concealment and revelation play out in the multi-layered play of impasto brush stroke, color, canvas texture, and frames within frames.

D. Dominick Lombardi “self-portraits” at ages 17, 35, and a future 95 echo Oscar Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray.” Since drawings and paintings are time stamps, his portrait at age 95 should keep the artist younger than his “portrait” for years to come. In the mean time, all three works are at liberty to display tumors and mutations at will. A connection might be made between Lombardi’s drawings and the work of Ivan Albright, which served as inspiration for the portrait in the Dorian Gray film.  

The link between abstract expressionism and the cartoon is energy. Marcy Brafman effectively harnesses the latent force of the animated character without its explicit imagery. In the process, her painted strokes effectively charge her open-ended narratives with wit and vigor. This play between presence and absence sets in motion a game of multi-layered readings. Mere suggestions of eye and mouth are sufficient to drive a story line.

Shantel Miller, Noah Becker, and Pierre St. Jacques
Shantel Miller, Noah Becker, and Pierre St. Jacques

For Shantel Miller, the oil medium has opened up formal creative possibilities to the black experience. The figure on their back on a bed with raised arms displays a complex combination of vulnerability, resignation, rest, and revery. The frame of the room, its bed, and of course the painting itself projected as four floating representations on the wall create a sense of the dreamy meditative with “eyes wide shut.” 

The three characters that Noah Becker introduces in his “Three Figures” (2023) painting cannot be ignored. That they are unsmiling, is not the issue. Like insistent strangers on a doorstep, they will not go away until their “demands” are satisfied. Each subject in a Becker painting tend to be locked within its edges, figures sealed against their ground. We look, negotiate, and contemplate the hats, beards, and suits from a culture out of time.

Painted elements floating across the white of the Pierre St. Jacques paper work spin in space from the “big bang” of its creation. Three male characters seem to be residual burns from an old black and white photo. The viewer is tasked with repeated playback possibilities to solve the cause of the explosion. It seems that someone had absent-mindedly pressed the UP elevator button before all hell broke loose.

Ruben Natal-San Miguel and Sam Jackson
Ruben Natal-San Miguel and Sam Jackson

Ruben Natal-San Miguel tracks the aesthetic impulse in the corners and creases of culture. One such fleeting event was captured at a table in Crotona Park in the Bronx, where Jennifer had casually stopped for her “Beauty Make Up Check.” As such, it’s a collaboration and celebration of one of life’s unguarded moments out of which any community is necessarily comprised.

By overlaying classic art of the past with tropes of tagging, graffiti and tattoo, Sam Jackson manages to blend various aesthetic disciplines. Fragmented text fuses personal and societal motifs with a collective sensibility, bringing to life the “dead” art of the past. It’s a trope not different in kind to Amy Hill and her “Woman in Orange Denim Jacket.” 

At Face Value: Curated by Robert Curcio and Leah Oates. Saturday, July 5 –27, 2024 @ Station Independent Projects , 220 Geary Avenue, Suite #2B, Toronto, Ontario, Canada http://www.curcioprojects.com/home.html http://www.stationindependent.com

 

Martin Weinstein: Looking Through Times

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Martin Weinstein’s art is time sensitive. No, not the anxiety producing, stressful, or expiring type. His art is more in the realm of the poetics of time – what we experience most often subconsciously, when connecting with the time/space undercurrent encountered during times of heightened awareness.

Time, a human construct, was designed to give us organization, to put forth the concept of the past, present and future which some see as virtually nonexistent. Weinstein takes a very close look at that last part, dividing his paintings into separate, physical overlapping transvisual layers. The resulting effect of his nontraditional approach precipitously changes the way we perceive two standard genres in painting: the landscape and the portrait, bringing renewed wonder and appreciation to these most familiar types.

Martin Weinstein, Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, all images courtesy of Cross Contemporary Art and the artist unless otherwise noted
Martin Weinstein, Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, all images courtesy of Cross Contemporary Art and the artist unless otherwise noted

Within his paintings, there is this shuffle between near and far, time of day and the changes throughout the seasons or years. Going beyond the preconceived, Weinstein changes the way we process visual information by breaking it down to selective details that jostle and float in space – real time triggers that occur when one is immersed in the experience of life. And despite the fact that Weinstein works with acrylic paints and panels, his art puts forth a very organic and fluid vision well beyond the fixed and familiar. In the orchestration or the illustration of time, the artist pushes beyond the limits within the realm of the painted surface – a challenge that Weinstein solves by angling and overlapping the painted clear acrylic sheets.

Martin Weinstein, Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, oblique angle photo by the author
Martin Weinstein, Dahlia Bed, Afternoon and Evening, 2018, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets, oblique angle photo by the author

Overall, Weinstein’s numerous works are Installed to hint at the sequential process of a graphic novel, moving the viewer through various vignettes that begin with an introduction to the lead characters in the form of portraits. From there, the installation moves us through individual, variously connected vistas where a windy and weightless thread begins in Italy with Venice, Stormy Evenings (2019) and Venice, Stormy Mornings (2021), soaring to a peak of intensity in mid-exhibition with Dogwoods and River, One afternoon Over another (2021), May Evening, One Over Another (2021) and Snowy Evenings, One Year Over another (2021).

Martin Weinstein, Venice, Stormy Mornings, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets
Martin Weinstein, Venice, Stormy Mornings, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s loving embrace of seasonal change is most profound in the spring and summer when the fireworks of exploding blooms reach their various peaks in warmer weather. In these instances, the artist gives that distinctive airiness in his painting technique and places it in the petals of the flowers. Often painted at close range, this series of floral delights is a continuous celebration, clearly recorded in the stunningly alluring Roses and River, Late Evening over Early Evening (2020), Irises and River, Evening Under Afternoon (2021) and Peonies, Three afternoons (2021). In these works and others like it, we experience the endless cycle of the earth through its most brilliant and colorful stars.

Martin Weinstein, May Evenings, One Over Another, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets
Martin Weinstein, May Evenings, One Over Another, 2021, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Weinstein’s portraits have that similar mix of persistence versus impermanence as we see more than one view of the subject. One immediately gets the feeling that these paintings, whether it is Syd (2015-2015), Katie (2022), John (2022) or the artist’s partner Tereza, April (2020), are individuals that are close in heart, mind and spirit to the artist. And as subjects, they also become integral but less overbearing elements than your standard portrait type, as they are absorbed directly into the artist’s fluid process. As a result, these portraits maintain the aura of each person, the spirit of the individual, placing them in an altogether different realm than the usual portrait type, just like the artist has done in his interpretation of a landscape.

Martin Weinstein, Syd, 2015, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets
Martin Weinstein, Syd, 2015, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Lastly, there is the Inside Over Outside series that consists of a number of captivating works that move the viewer right through solid spatial boundaries. Walls dissolve, near and far intermingle, and what we understand as here and there blend together in a dance of visual delights. Add to the mix timeless cities like Rome and Venice and the outside under inside takes on even more import, giving the entire materialization of the narrative a chilling vulnerability.

Martin Weinstein, Rome, Stormy Afternoons, Outside Under Inside, 2023, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets
Martin Weinstein, Rome, Stormy Afternoons, Outside Under Inside, 2023, acrylics on multiple acrylic sheets

Take for instance, Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside (2023). Here we see the heavens intermingling seamlessly with the ceiling structure, while landmarks encroach and interior furnishings hang in the balance. In Rome, Stormy Afternoon, Outside Under Inside, and the many works that take on that same challenge of traveling through tangible barriers that demarcate space, there is Weinstein’s unique take on the plotting of time, a vision with far more layers of meaning than the ones recorded in paint. What remains is a very tangible substance well beyond mere representation. Landscape and portrait painting has been thoroughly resuscitated, revived and brought back to its once compelling place in the works of Martin Weinstein.

John Meredith: Last Breaths

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Installation view, (all photos courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery)
Installation view, (all photos courtesy of the Christopher Cutts Gallery)

The late paintings of John Meridith have a different sort of clarity than his earlier works, where black lines were used to clarify shapes, emphasize movement and forge a foreground. In the last decade of his life, when Meredith switched “…between cigarettes and bronchodilators, likely with a paintbrush in hand…”, he created paintings that are more distilled, direct and meditative. Already an introverted individual, in those last ten years of his life, he became even more reclusive knowing his days were numbered. This was especially true during the onset of his battle with emphysema. This dire reality appears to have pushed the artist toward a more transcendent vision, despite any anger he may have been feeling.

John Meredith, Tangiers No II (1990), oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches
John Meredith, Tangiers No II (1990), oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches

The earliest of his late paintings here are all from 1990, and they are the five most hopeful and brightest works. Only Tangiers No II has any reference of Meredith’s use of black to clarify his earlier visions. At or just after the beginning of most of the paintings here, Meredith placed strips of tape to mask the white or lightly painted ground of the canvas. At some point in the painting process the tape was removed, and in many instances painted over a bit – or totally if the artist found that relatively clean stripe to be too imposing or distracting to the overall composition. In Tangiers No II, the artist comes close to suggesting a portrait with strangely clownlike features. Any suggestion of humor that might enter one’s thoughts here is quickly dispelled by the large, jet black swathes of paint that obliterate any indication of a mouth, while the splashes of paint thinner, probably turpentine, create purple, black and red drips indicating some sort of distress.

John Meredith, Reclining Figure (1990), oil on canvas, 54 x 65 inches
John Meredith, Reclining Figure (1990), oil on canvas, 54 x 65 inches

The most compelling work from the 1990’s is Reclining Figure. To the mostly primary colors of the red, yellow and blue backdrop, the artist adds wide sweeping strokes of heavily muddied white to suggest a lounging subject that is partially obscured by a wash of ochre over the figure’s legs. The brilliance here is the way Meredith utilizes such a heavily contrasted paint application of the figure, as opposed to the rest of the painted surface to work in the greatly abstracted and simplified human form. Placed just right of center, the figure looks backlit by brilliant sunlight – a visual tour de force much greater than the sum of its parts.

John Meredith, Emperor (1993), oil on canvas, 68 x 48 inches
John Meredith, Emperor (1993), oil on canvas, 68 x 48 inches

Then there are two paintings from 1993, which bring back the use of black lines – only this time it is more about creating rhythmic upward movement that is both alluring and impermeable in Emperor, or a tangled trap of contrasting thoughts in Key Largo. Then there are four paintings from 1994. The one named Untitled is the most hopeful in palette and approach and reminds me very much of the serene and seductive paintings Matisse made while living in Nice. Conversely, Eroica is the most disturbing work in the exhibition, and consists of two ghostly forms painted over a black ground that interact and look back at the viewer creating a chilling effect.

John Meredith, Eroica (1994), oil on canvas, 74 x 49 inches
John Meredith, Eroica (1994), oil on canvas, 74 x 49 inches

The two Untitled paintings from 1997 show most profoundly, the way Meredith worked with masking tape. In both works, the tape is used as a tool to create structure and composition. Working within a very shallow space, the artist manages to create compelling spiritual depth. In their clarity and simplicity, these two paintings remind me of De Kooning’s late works when his debilitating illness changed his approach and aesthetic. The one example from 1999, painted a year before his death, features four white haired feminine forms that intertwine like smoke from one of Meredith’s many cigarettes. A late statement on how life, living, lust and death are fleeting and beyond our control, like smoke from a fire and Meredith is the flame.

John Meredith: Last Breaths, June 6th – July 13th, 2024. Christopher Cutts Gallery, 21 Morrow Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6R 2H9