Category: Essays

Posted on

Titans of Sculpture: Henry Moore and Marino Marini

by Roy Bernardi

Henry Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. His sculpture style was significantly influenced by his experience as a soldier in World War I. Moore also produced many drawings, including a series depicting the Second World War, along with other graphic works and studies on paper. 

Marino Marini (27 February 1901 – 6 August 1980) was an Italian sculpture and educator. He initially trained as a painter in Florence before transitioning to sculpture. While he continued to engage in drawing and painting, Marini focused mainly on sculpture starting around 1922. Known for his figurative sculptures, particularly the “horse and rider” theme, which he explored throughout his career. In 1929, he took over from Arturo Martini as a professor at the Scuola d’Arte di Villa Reale in Monza, close to Milan, Italy, a role he held until 1940.

Henry Moore and Marino Marini, 1970, (detail) Gelatin silver print by Yousuf Karsh

Henry Moore and Marino Marini were introduced in 1951 by the New York art dealer Curt Valentin, leading to a significant friendship that endured throughout their careers. They often met along the Tuscan coast in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s, where Marini lived and Moore had a vacation residence. Both artists sought to revisit and modernize the European sculptural tradition, which Tuscany offered many exceptional examples. They shared numerous creative interests and held deep admiration for one another. Together, they cultivated a network of friendships and professional relationships with notable artists and intellectuals, including Jean Arp, Max Beckmann, Salvador Dali, Alexander Calder, Yves Tanguy, Lyonel Feininger, Alberto Giacometti, and Jacques Lipchitz.

Marino Marini, Due Figure, 1941, oil, tempera, pen, india ink, brown ink and pastel on paper (13.5 x 10.25 inches)
Marino Marini, Due Figure, 1941, oil, tempera, pen, india ink, brown ink and pastel on paper (13.5 x 10.25 inches)

It is intriguing to note that both artists subconsciously exhibited remarkably similar artistic styles in their drawings, particularly in their early drawings from the 1940s. Their drawings predominantly focused on potential sculptural figures, as demonstrated in the drawings presented here. The figures in Marini’s Due Figure from 1941, created with oil, tempera, pen, India ink, brown ink, and pastel on paper, and Moore’s Draped Standing Figures in Red from 1944, executed in pencil, ink, wax crayon, and watercolour, reveal a striking resemblance when placed side by side. Both artists are utilizing mixed media materials on paper of comparable dimensions. It is clear that these illustrations depict figures arranged as non-objective prospective subjects in a sculptural context. The Vatican Museum contains a small drawing by Moore and features a collection specifically focused on Marini’s early works on paper.

Henry Moore, Draped Standing Figures in Red, 1944, pencil, ink, wax crayon and watercolour (15.75 x 12.25 inches)
Henry Moore, Draped Standing Figures in Red, 1944, pencil, ink, wax crayon and watercolour (15.75 x 12.25 inches)

Two talented artists who unknowingly shared a strikingly similar artistic journey in their early works. Both artists hailed from different backgrounds (Marini from Italy, Moore from England) but found their calling in the realm of art, showcasing unique perspectives and creative flair in their works on paper. From a young age, these artists displayed a natural inclination towards art, doodling on any surface they could find and immersing themselves in colours and shapes that ignited their imagination. Haunted by the war and the suffering of civilians he observed during the bombings, Moore’s artistic themes were significantly shaped by these experiences. Meanwhile, Marini’s artistic style underwent a transformation due to the war, moving away from the smoother, classical forms of his earlier works towards a more jagged, Expressionist style that reflected his anxieties and disillusionment with humanity in the aftermath of the war.

Combining the enigmatic allure of artistic expression with the intricacies of the subconscious mind, the intriguing parallels between two renowned artists’ early works have captivated art enthusiasts and scholars alike. It’s a fascinating intersection of creativity, influence, and individual style as these artists, perhaps unknowingly, manifested remarkably similar artistic techniques in their works during the formative stages of their careers. Through a journey of discovery and analysis, we can unravel the threads that connect these artists’ early artistic endeavours, shedding light on the subconscious forces at play in shaping their distinctive visual languages. 

Marino Marini, Pomona, 1943, oil, pastel and black crayon on paper (15.12 x 11.12 inches) (left) - Henry Moore, Two Women and a child, 1940, pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, watercolour wash and ink (15.75 x 11.75 inches) (right)
Left: Marino Marini, Pomona, 1943, oil, pastel and black crayon on paper (15.12 x 11.12 inches). Right: Henry Moore, Two Women and a child, 1940, pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, watercolour wash and ink (15.75 x 11.75 inches)

Despite their unique perspectives, these artists often incorporated similar elements in their compositions, from the arrangement of subjects to the harmonious blend of colours that evoked a sense of unity and cohesion in their artworks. It is intriguing to explore how unconscious influences, such as personal experiences, emotions, and cultural backgrounds, may have shaped the artists’ early artistic expressions. Delving into the depths of the subconscious unveils a rich tapestry of inspiration within their works. They collectively transformed classical sculpture into a more figurative semi-abstract style that aligned with contemporary trends.

They shared a profound admiration for Michelangelo’s sculptures, particularly David (1501-1504) and Pietà (1498-1499), the latter illustrating Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus after the Crucifixion. Both masterpieces were crafted from marble extracted from the nearby Carrara quarries. Notably, the Pietà is distinguished as the only artwork that Michelangelo ever signed. On 21 May 1972, this sculpture, located in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, suffered damage when a mentally unstable geologist, originally from Hungary and residing in Australia, entered the chapel and assaulted the statue with a geologist’s hammer, proclaiming, ‘I am Jesus Christ; I have risen from the dead!’.

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1969-1970, Bronze with brown patina
Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1969-1970, Bronze with brown patina

On the 15 December, 2005, a bronze statue by Moore, entitled Reclining Figure (1969-1970), depicting an abstract female figure, lying on her back with her legs raised and feet grounded, supported on one arm and resting on her hip. Valued at £3 million, was stolen from the courtyard of the Henry Moore Foundation located in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, England. The sculpture which weighed 2.1 tons and measured 3.6 metres in length was lifted using a crane and transported away on a flatbed truck. It is believed that the statue was melted down and sold for £5,000 as scrap metal. Six casts of the reclining figure were created in total.

Marino Marini, The Angel of the City, 1948, Bronze with brown patina
Marino Marini, The Angel of the City, 1948, Bronze with brown patina

Marini’s sculpture titled The Angel of the City (1948) a seminal work by the Italian artist depicts a nude man sitting with outstretched arms on a horse. There are castings on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, as well as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. This piece was one of Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, USA’s most prominent pieces of art lost during a flood at Bear Run Nature Reserve in August 1956. The sculpture was part of the Kaufmann family collection and was lost for years until found in fragments in August 2009.

Both artists achieved global recognition during their careers, showcasing their art work at prominent museum exhibitions and receiving numerous accolades worldwide for their work. Both are in collections with works in hundreds of galleries, museums and public spaces throughout the world.

Marino Marini, Ballerino, 1954, Bronze with dark brown patina (left) Henry Moore, Mother and child, 1980, Bronze with dark brown patina (right) 
Marino Marini, Ballerino, 1954, Bronze with dark brown patina (left) Henry Moore, Mother and child, 1980, Bronze with dark brown patina (right) 

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is home to the world’s most extensive public collection of Henry Moore’s art, encompassing sculptures, maquettes, and works on paper, largely donated by the artist himself during the years 1971 to 1974. The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre was inaugurated at the AGO in 1974 to showcase Moore’s original donation and has since become a landmark in Toronto.

The Marino Marini Museum, located in Florence, Italy, is dedicated to the artist’s legacy and creations. Occupying the former San Pancrazio Church, the museum displays a rich collection of Marini’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings, offering valuable insights into his artistic progression and journey.

Posted on

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva: New Spiritual Abstraction

by Steve Rockwell

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva’s New Spiritual Abstraction carries a vital charge that fulfills Bruce Nauman’s claim in the text of his iconic 1967 neon wall sign, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths. There is an import to Suarez-Kanerva’s paintings that impels the viewer toward the sublime, the evident dynamism of the artist’s execution rendering its draught irresistible. 

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 50, 2008, watercolor and gouache, 62  x 45 inches
Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 50, 2008, watercolor and gouache, 62  x 45 inches

The visual gestalt of Elan Flow 6, and particularly Wheel within a Wheel 50, form whirlpools of meticulously painted slivers that deliver A Descent into the Maelström as described by Edgar Allen Poe in his 1841 short story. While Suarez-Kanerva depicts a wheel within a wheel, Poe’s is a story within a story, both revelatory encounters with nature, altogether beautiful and awesome as creations. 

The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel experienced his Wheel within a Wheel as a rupture of the visible heavens, revealing the fiery fabric beneath its skin. He described the appearance and structure of the wheels as sparkling like topaz, all four alike, “Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went.” Not surprisingly, interpreters of our age have imagined alien space craft.

Attempts over the centuries to depict what Ezekiel saw tended to the literal. Modernism, however, has bestowed Suarez-Kanerva the mantle of abstraction, a providential gift to tell her own visual story through her art. The employment of her own brand of the fractal contrasts with the complex mathematical class of geometric shapes. While computers by means of Mandelbrot Sets may generate these forms from virtually anything in our environment from coastlines to mountains, and clouds to hurricanes, each Suarez-Kanerva painting is a unique synthesis of elements directly observed in nature. A fluency in the language of abstraction has made the transcription of her insights in paint authoritative. 

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Breath of Life 3, 2022, acrylic, 40 x 30 inches
Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Breath of Life 3, 2022, acrylic, 40 x 30 inches

Suarez-Kanerva’s art conforms to a law of geometry that generates a sense of the living from the inorganic. The connection to nature rooted in childhood memories of nature-hikes and world travels had clearly seeded the artist’s vision for creative possibilities. Having grown up in diverse environments such as Oregon and Venezuela further broadened her scope, enabling the inference of broader principles at play in the biosphere. This identification with the “living matrix” has found its medium of expression in the material tools of her craft. The inherent qualities of ink, pencil, pastels, water-colour, gouache and acrylic combined with the properties of paper canvas, and wood, are chemically reactive within the viewer’s sensorium, producing a virtual light show in the rods and cones in the retinal wall of the eye. When channeled through a variety of geometric forms and templates, energy is released. Within the “wheel within a wheel” theme alone, the painterly possibilities presented are virtually infinite. 

In Donald Kuspit’s Whitehot Magazine article, The New Abstraction: Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, he observed that the artist has tapped into the sublime by means of a play of opposites, effectively harnessing the tensions between “biosphere and noosphere,” something that Kant had found terrifying and beyond comprehension. Through an active “spiralling” of the universe as a whole, a kind of unity or Omega Point is inferred, arriving at the transcendence that Emerson in his philosophy advanced. Suarez-Kanerva clearly substantiates Nauman’s contention that the work of true artist plays an essential role in the revelation of “mystic truths.” 

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Beholder, 2023, watercolor and gouache, 30 x 41 inches
Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Beholder, 2023, watercolor and gouache, 30 x 41 inches

The 2023 water-colour and gouache, Beholder is an integration and refraction of tree, flower and insect as if by laser beam, the 2022 Breath of Life acrylic a dissolution into gentle waft, a dematerialization to airy essence. Each atomized fragment, like DNA, carries its blueprint as seeded potential, sealing the image with the hope for perpetuity. With the Elan Flow series, the germinative release of energy verges on the explosive. Here again is an echo of what Poe described as sublimely beautiful, yet awesome in power as latency.

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Elan Flow 6, 2019, acrylic, 60 x 60 inches
Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Elan Flow 6, 2019, acrylic, 60 x 60 inches

Suarez-Kanerva is a metamodernist by virtue of the vitalist optimism that infuses her art. The artist’s ability to integrate multiple techniques and theories allow for a plumb of the “the structure of feeling.” Works such as Wildflower Fields, (California Native Plants #2) 2023 and Wheel within a Wheel 112, 2017 retain evidence of the hand, the living gesture as affirmation. Within the diversity of Suarez-Kanerva’s “Visionary Geometries” the point of unifying singularity is the circle, a restless orb in perpetual motion, seeding a harvest from one series of works into another. While the recent Wooded Terrain series of raw wood panel works are devoid of this element, the aura of restless vitality remains.

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Wooded Terrain 5, 2021, charcoal, pastel and ink on raw wood panel, 20  x 24 inches
Lorien Suarez-Kanerva, Wooded Terrain 5, 2021, charcoal, pastel and ink on raw wood panel, 20  x 24 inches

“I build multiple levels and layers of elaborate designs that emerge from an underlying matrix to create a strong sensation of growth, movement and depth.” The artist’s operating principle of constructing her painting in levels and layers is an understatement. More aptly, Suarez-Kanerva engages in a joyous plunder of the corpus of modernism, its roots and the art of the past. Having surveyed the dazzling complexity of her output, this romp through art history has yielded amply productive treasure. The artist possesses the gift of precisely gleaning the element required from an artist. With Joseph Stella it might have been his dense lattice of abstracted forms. A gloss of the Bauhaus zeitgeist combined with the Abstraction-Creation artists of the 1930s has streamed her influences into an apex in harmony with the Orphism of Robert and Sonia Delaunay. As Robert Delaynay elegantly summarized, “Painting by nature is a luminous language.”

Lorien Suarez-Kanerva’s New Spiritual Abstraction Exhibitions:

June 14 – August 30, 2024 at the Mary G. Hardin Center for Cultural Arts in Gadsden, AL

June 13 – October 18, 2025 at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, GA

January 2026 – April 2026 at the Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA

Posted on

The Fine Art of Grinding

by Steve Rockwell

The impulse to shred back issues of dArt magazine to make pulp and paper had yielded dozens of 21 x 16 inch sheets some five years after the 2011 dArt Burger exhibition at De Luca Fine Art in Toronto. The show co-producer Ben Marshall had insisted that we install an actual meat grinder in the show, its function having been symbolic. Practically speaking, neither grinding nor shredding paper is possible with it. A basic office shredder and a uniquely-designed blender are the sole equipment requirements for dArt magazine paper production. For James Cooper’s video on the collage potential of dArt click: Dart Onion.

Steve Rockwell, Minced dArt, 2011, meat grinder with shredded dArt magazine pages and cropped magazine

Steve Rockwell, Minced dArt, 2011, meat grinder with shredded dArt magazine pages and cropped magazine

A lingering colloquialism since the horse and buggy days has been the tale of glue factories killing old horses and grinding up their bones to make glue. The bubbling up of the saying, of course, arises generally in response to some human inkling of its own mortality. I sense that it might be into this very psychic cranny that San Antonio artist Hills Snyder casts his Dickensian shadow. Here is my account of meeting the artist at the 2005 Artpace Chalk It Up event in San Antonio:

Hills Snyder, Misery Shoppe Repairman
Hills Snyder, Misery Shoppe Repairman

“Hills Snyder arrived in undertaker black to set up his Misery Repair Shoppe, comprised of a chair and a desk with a meat grinder with which to pulverize his chalk one stick at a time. He set up shop on the Houston bridge above the banks of the San Antonio River, in itself a bit chalky from limestone, I suppose. Grinding chalk is a dry, dusty job, as is purging despair. Snyder was making a connection with the white cliffs of Dover, specifically Shakespeare Cliff, where the Earl of Gloucester, blinded for his loyalty to King Lear, took his imaginary fall, demonstrating to the ages the cathartic power of tragedy.”

More can be said about the pulverizing of chalk over the centuries. Lessons have been sown and inculcated into the fertile cranial soil of blinking pupils facing dusty blackboards, generation upon generation, stick upon stick, scratched by the stern “chalk grinders” of yesteryear.

In the French city of Rouen in 1913, a young Marcel Duchamp chanced upon a chocolate grinder displayed in a confectioner’s window. The machine became the subject of two paintings, precise in the style of an engineering diagram with flattened planes, eschewing the artist’s hand. To the artist, however, its operational churning suggested something auto-erotic. Duchamp made it the subject of a major work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (1915-1923), its mechanical subject matter conversing in the language of the sexes. Frequently the artist would sign his art with his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, or “Eros, that’s life,” as he had done with his 1919 L.H.O.O.Q. work, signifying the extent to which sexuality was at the heart of his philosophy of life.

I selected Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. as the “meat” for my own grinder, understanding that the gesture was consistent with at least one principle of Dada, the cycle of breaking and making – a shadow cast by Snyder’s chalk grinder. We all go to the same place. We all come from dust, and to dust we all return.

Above: Front cover dArt International #19 Fall 2006, : L.H.O.O.Q by Marcel Duchamp, 1919, rectified readymade of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Courtesy Private Collection. ©2006 Marcel Duchamp /Artists Rights (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Posted on

An Artist Rediscovered: Peter Clapham Sheppard (1879-1965)

by Roy Bernardi

Peter Clapham Sheppard, Caledon Farm, 1935-36, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 101.6 cm
Peter Clapham Sheppard, Caledon Farm, 1935-36, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 101.6 cm

Peter Clapham Sheppard had lain in an unmarked grave for over fifty years in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery until 2018 when his name and dates were finally inscribed on a headstone. The arc of his story is a narrative of time and the persistence of art to survive it.

Unlike his more famous Canadian contemporaries, the Group of Seven, renowned for their dramatic landscapes of Ontario’s northern hinterland, Sheppard painted the great urban centres of Toronto, New York, and Montreal.  Early 20th century modernism in Toronto was a variant of European Impressionism and Post-Impressionism applied to the Canadian experience. While his aforementioned peers drew inspiration from the too familiar landscapes of the Scandinavian avant-grade, inspired by a trip to the Albright-Knox exhibition of 1912, Sheppard aligned himself with the collective in New York City known as The Eight (later The Ashcan School) during the 1910s. As in the second-half of the 19th century in Paris, modernism was essentially an urban experience and Sheppard’s powerful canvases of docks, rail yards, bridge building, circuses, rural settings etc. reflected the dynamic growth and industrial expansion in Toronto at the start of the new century. It is not certain how long Sheppard’s sojourn lasted in New York City but his work there clearly attests to a relationship with painters like John Sloan, George Bellows, Edward Hopper known as the Ashcan School. As well brief encounters with American artist Julius Rolshoven. 

Peter Clapham Sheppard, The Waterfront, New York City 1922, oil on canvas, 89 x 122 cm
Peter Clapham Sheppard, The Waterfront, New York City, 1922, oil on canvas, 89 x 122 cm

Sheppard’s monumental composition, The Waterfront (New York City) 1922, (above) for example, is a boldly painted canvas that evokes the smell of the sea along the New York dockside, with the city scapes behind.  His Engine Home of 1919, (below) a work of bravura color, was unlike any work being created in Toronto at the time and to the eyes of a conservative, reactionary public it would have been considered hardcore Impressionism.

Peter Clapham Sheppard, The Engine Home, 1919, oil on canvas, 84 x 91.4 cm
Peter Clapham Sheppard, The Engine Home, 1919, oil on canvas, 84 x 91.4 cm

But here is where destiny and a compelling human narrative reclaim Sheppard from an undeserved obscurity. It is the story of three lives and of three different generations beautifully intersecting one another through art over the span of three centuries – a rich and “embroidered ribbon” that unspools artfully as a novel or a work of cinema with “wonder and woe, glory and grief”. It is both a reflection on the forgotten as well as the ecstatic recovery of lost treasures beginning with Peter Clapham Sheppard whose life at age sixty unfolds into a new destiny when he meets Bernice Fenwick Martin in 1941. She, in turn, meets Louis Gagliardi in the last chapters of her own life to transform all three lives, completely, with joy, purpose, and resolution. A synopsis would go like this:

In 1941, at the funeral of artist and teacher, J. W. Beatty,  the aging Peter Sheppard met Bernice Martin, also a former student of Beatty’s and a painter herself who is a generation younger. The two would spend the next twenty-four years inextricably bound by a shared commitment to art at their very cores, companionship, and  love. At the end of his life, Sheppard is placed in the care of the Salvation Army Lodge with the added consolation that, he was literally only steps away, that is, across the street from the home for which Bernice his last friend and support, lived in. When Sheppard died, he left Bernice the only asset he had: all his artworks, a lifetime of his artistic legacy, wherever they might be found. 

Peter Clapham Sheppard, Lower New York, 1922, oil on canvas, 122 x 89 cm
Peter Clapham Sheppard, Lower New York, 1922, oil on canvas, 122 x 89 cm

In 1987, Louis Gagliardi saw a painting in a gallery which he purchased. “It just spoke to him” as the saying goes. A name and address on the back impelled him to get into his car to meet the artist. It led him to a Salvation Army Lodge and to Bernice Fenwick Martin. She was a petite woman in her eighties who carried herself with an old-world dignity.  Gagliardi could not know it then, but this countenance belied her tragic ruin and fall from “riches to rags”. Having been defrauded and dispossessed of her home, her wealth, and all her possessions years before, she was now given charitable shelter.  The poignant irony to this chapter is that, located in the very small bedroom to which her world had now been confined, a window looked out to the very house and happy life she once knew and lost, a cruel and painful daily reminder, there across the street.

This is a story of humanity and kindred friendship, despite the many years that separated Bernice and Louis in age. They shared a bond of the highest and rarest kind— the love of art: one having lived the active life of creativity; the other committed to the pursuit of knowledge.  Over time, as Bernice recounted the dispossession of all her property and life savings years before, she told Louis how she wept most despairingly for all of the Sheppard paintings once entrusted to her safekeeping. She was powerless to stop those strange men, the movers ordered by the bank, whose job it was to load trucks of the great stacks of canvases that were all that remained of one man’s prolific life.

Peter Clapham Sheppard, Snowstorm Montreal, c. 1921, oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Peter Clapham Sheppard, Snowstorm Montreal, c. 1921, oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm

Sheppard and Bernice’s loss inspired a purpose that would occupy the rest of their lives. Bernice and Louis set about to reclaim whatever artworks by Sheppard they could locate, although hundreds of sketchbooks, oil panels, and canvases had been lost, stolen, and sold off in bulk containers at garage-sale prices. It was at one location, on such a quest of her direction, that their hopes were initially dashed until, by dint of physical exertion on the part of Gagliardi, a cache of wondrous artworks by Sheppard revealed themselves in the dank and dingy darkness of a common storage space. The expression of speechless joy on Bernice Martin’s face when they looked at each other by the light of a handheld flashlight will be one of Louis’ imperishable memories. In that instant Bernice was reunited, not only with the man she loved and admired, but with the legacy he had left her, out of love and friendship and gratitude. It was as though all the preceding years of waste and loss were suddenly redeemed and fresh hope restored. Bernice Fenwick Martin passed away on September 15, 1999, just months before seeing the new millennium and two years shy of reaching her hundredth birthday.  

From left: Peter Clapham Sheppard, Country Idyl, Erin Ontario, oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm, and Near Erin, Ontario oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
From left: Peter Clapham Sheppard, Country Idyl, Erin Ontario, oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm, and Near Erin, Ontario oil on panel, 21.6 x 26.7 cm

Gagliardi continues his quest to honour the memories of Peter Clapham Sheppard and Bernice Martin. In 2018, he published a monograph, Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work and had the artist’s name inscribed on a stone by a resting place long forgotten.

Posted on

(So) Happy Together

by D. Dominick Lombardi

“Ever since the Big Bang, it’s ALL collage!”
Todd Bartell

Finding common ground in Contemporary Art today is not necessarily about aesthetic or messaging commonality. The age of Isms, or schools of art are rare, largely due to the fact that labels are limiting and many artists are experimental or in new media. One of the things I have noticed over the years is how much new art looks multidimensional. How it is common to see dueling perspectives and timelines, think Neo Rauch; or accumulations as art or installation with works by Mike Kelly, Faith Ringgold or Nick Cave.

The title of this exhibition, which refers to the 1967 song by The Turtles, was one of the first things I thought of when thinking about the art in this exhibition. That feeling that an artist reaches, at some point in the making of an art work, when the process and purpose of a work comes together and drives the artist to dig deep. For this exhibition, I have selected six artists who reveal both new and traditional ways of expressing great depth of vision while creating compelling, topical, beautiful and at times humorous works.

Joel Carreiro, Untitled b27fz (detail) (2022), 18 x 24 inches
Joel Carreiro, Untitled b27fz (detail) (2022), 18 x 24 inches

Joel Carreiro, who uses either classic collage methods or multiple image transfer, commingles various art ages and types with stunning results. With his transfers, Carreiro weaves wondrous visual transitions that ebb and flow, forming waves of optical transitions. Patterns develop, rhythm is created, and an overall composition becomes focused on referential glimpses and color connections. In his collage series, Carreiro combines a portrait painted by Picasso with an iconic offering from another notable Modern artist suggesting a humorous take on greatness, while the overall effect creates a compelling aesthetic conversation.

Yeon Jin Kim, Plastic Jogakbo #4 (detail) (2019), hand-sewn plastic bags, 56 x 40 inches
Yeon Jin Kim, Plastic Jogakbo #4 (detail) (2019), hand-sewn plastic bags, 56 x 40 inches

Another collector of elements is Yeon Jin Kim, as she updates the traditional Korean art process jogakbos, which is the creation of wrapping cloths from pieces of various fabrics, by using a variety of modern day plastics in place of fabric. In doing so, Kim switches indications of a once male dominated society that insisted on women being frugal, to focus on our big business dominated world of profit and ubiquitous waste. This contrast is both stunning and beautiful, as it sheds light on the fact that no matter how much things change, they in some way stay the same.

Don Doe, Dorothy Twister in Rimini (2021), oil on linen, 38 x 24 inches
Don Doe, Dorothy Twister in Rimini (2021), oil on linen, 38 x 24 inches

Don Doe falls into the multidimensional zone, where collages largely from fashion magazines and ‘mens’ periodicals result in oddly sexual, powerful, simultaneous juxtapositions of euphoria and despair. Having little concern for lining things up anatomically, Doe suggests a nod to the divergent imagery found in film montage, while the clarity in the contrasting bodily forms makes them appear more psychedelic or dreamy. Given all this, Doe manages to create a narrative that represents much of what both excites and represses.

Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, When Summer Went, ink, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, When Summer Went, ink, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

Cecilia Whittaker-Doe brings us something of a kaleidoscopic view of a landscape. By combining multiple perspectives and stylistic approaches on one common surface, Whittaker-Doe leads us down a trail of wisdom and wonder. What really draws the attention of the viewer is her unique interpretation of ‘natural’ color, and how various elements seem to trade hues with adjacent forms. It’s all a puzzle waiting to be solved, or not, as the journey is the message.

Matthew Garrison, Invincible (2009), plastic, newspaper, wood, light bulb, 8 ½ x 11 x 3 inches
Matthew Garrison, Invincible (2009), plastic, newspaper, wood, light bulb, 8 ½ x 11 x 3 inches

Matthew Garrison is known for his experimental approach to media. Using video, photography, paint, found materials, Garrison brings to mind the art movement Arte Povera, with influences more coming from the home computer age than the ‘poor object’ or his predecessors. By employing references to the banal or the everyday, Garrison reintroduces popular culture as near venerable, while his sense of humor tends to guide us into the deeper meaning of his work and the odd possibilities that lie ahead.

Margaret Roleke, Pink (detail) (2022), wire, spent shotgun shells, brass, 15 x 13 x 14 inches
Margaret Roleke, Pink (detail) (2022), wire, spent shotgun shells, brass, 15 x 13 x 14 inches

Margaret Roleke gathers contentious objects to make potent political statements in her desire to prompt positive change. Women’s rights, gun reform, cultural and racial oppression all seem to have some overlap in her prolific, spent cartridge series of sculptures and wall hangings. Which, when displayed in a gallery or museum setting become optical plays on gesture and form. In the end, we are confronted with sheer numbers, of scary symbols all too abundant that have become a sad defining reality.

(So) Happy Together opens January 21st at Artego, 32-88 48th St, Queens, NY 11103. The exhibition closes February 25th. For more information, go to: https://www.studioartego.com/exhibitions/forthcoming/

Proudly powered by WordPress