Baroque
September 1st-15th, 2006
Opening September 7th, 2006
Curated by John Cox
Frantically Baroque is a group exhibition of two-dimensional work concerned with ideas of extravagance, complexity, and the bizarre. Aesthetic and concept are brought together through working processes that verge on being excessive. These works are characterized by an expressive dissonance and elaborate formal articulations.
The work of Jolynn Krystosek has the most obvious relation to the Baroque through her use of cast wax picture frames. These ornate oval frames provide the setting for her low relief carvings of flowers. The seemingly fragile nature of the wax reinforces the delicacy with which Krystosek makes her marks. Charlotte Nicholson’s work relies on a similar delicacy of mark, but to a decidedly different end. The precision and density of Nicholson’s marks breaks down the space established in the Fragonard paintings she quotes.
The ambiguity of two dimensional space is also evidenced in the works of Halsey Hathaway and Scott Malbaurn. The asymmetry and irregularity of Hathaway’s imagery belies the decisiveness of his use of color to dictate spatial cues. This calculated approach counters the ease and spontaneity of the work’s initial read. Malbaurn, in turn, uses solid fields of color to create space wherein formal choices are literally carved into the surface. Like Hathaway’s shapes, Malbaurn’s lines appear light and intuitive even as a closer reading proves they were the first of many steps.
Intuitive discernment plays an important role in Pat Berran’s mixed media paintings. The exhilaration Berran takes in the act of making a painting is apparent in the material process of the works. Berran’s surfaces take on a sumptuousness that speaks to painting’s breadth as a unique medium of expression. In the work of Danille Mysliwiec the grandeur of pure painting is exaggerated until it borders on the point of becoming grotesque. Mysliwiec’s disembodied and torn marks, coalesce into exuberant and aggressive compositions. Eren Johnson takes a similar position towards the grotesque in her work, though under a much more somber tone. The meticulously painted surfaces of her work illustrate the capacity for painting to seduce even when representing a subject as repellent as disease.
