Grotesquely drunken characters

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

By Aaron Wallis

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-As my loyal readers are no doubt aware, this column has frequently served as a forum to bemoan the lack of contemporary art in Jackson. Hold up playa, there are some real gems by contemporary blue-chip artists in town. And “I pity da fool” who don’t drop by Heather James Fine Art to peep them, fo real. I recently attended a talk by curator Chip Tom and director Lyndsay McCandless, a rare opportunity to learn more about the processes of contemporary artists.

I have always loved paintings of trees that use the tree form as a structure for more expressive mark-making like “Study for Tree of Tenere” by artist Kelly Barrie. Barrie creates tree forms by manipulating phosphorescent pigment on the studio floor. A large format camera is used from atop a ladder to take pictures that are pieced together in Photoshop and reprinted on a grand scale.

The work is visually stunning, technically flawless and has a story behind it. The Tree of Tenere once stood as a marker for travelers crossing the Sahara Desert, until a drunk Libyan soldier managed to crash into it with a truck and kill the tree. The dead tree is now in an Israeli Museum.

Another technically stunning work is “Bathroom, 1 White Carp” by Japanese artist Seiju Toda. Toda goes to extraordinary lengths to create his art, assembling kind of a basin made from trees cut less than 24 hours earlier, so the cells are still living, then fills it with water and a $10,000 albino carp. This scene was then photographed and re-printed as an offset lithograph from aluminum plates. The photographic half-tone pattern is absolutely flawless and the work captures an ethereal quality that existed for only a moment.

In the next room, a male nude hangs that I mistook for a Thomas Eakins due to the dark background and a luminously exquisite rendering of male flesh. Turns out it was actually painted by a 14-year-old Pablo Picasso. My bad. Are there still people who think modern art was created because artists could not draw or were lazy? After looking at this early Picasso, even the most rigid classiest would have to admit that Picasso was the equal of any renaissance master.

Other highlights include “Palestinian Islands II” by recent Yale MFA Naomi Safron-Hon. It consists of brightly colored lace hung on a canvas with concrete forced through it. My personal favorite is Eduardo Zamora’s Los Borrachines. The painting is a very large expressionist bar scene, full of grotesquely drunken characters. It reminds me of Phillip Guston or perhaps even Ralph Stedman without the lines.

The aforementioned work is comparatively priced with all the uninspired paintings of elk, bison and Indians that fill most of the other galleries in town. I think it’s a better investment because the world at-large will care who these artists are in 50 years. And their work will certainly be worth more than the AOL stock that is dragging your portfolio below sea level. JHW

‘Study for Tree of Tenere,” Kelly Barrie

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Grotesquely drunken characters | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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