Compelling Nondescriptions
By Tom Wachunas
“A photograph is an instantaneous evidence,
a mechanical capturing; but, painting is evidence through layering and
materiality. Painting is an
accumulation of marks and a series of decisions. And it is the evidence through
time and labor that pushes the portrait beyond a fleeting moment and develops a
unique personal relation between the model, the artist, and the painting.” -Melissa Markwald
EXHIBIT: New Chapters – Paintings by Melissa Markwald
/ in the Malone Gallery / on view THROUGH DECEMBER 10, located in
the Johnson Center on the campus of Malone University, 2600 Cleveland Avenue
NW, Canton, Ohio / Gallery open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.– 6 p.m., and
closed when there are no classes in session.
Here’s part of what
I wrote in February, 2016, about Melissa Markwalds’s immense (the largest being
90” x 72”) oil portraits in her solo exhibit at Massillon Museum: ...these works are pleasantly intrusive
invitations to consider portraiture beyond the merely cosmetic incidentals of
“individuality.” Instead, you might consider seeing them as allegories of a
society far too fond of enlarging itself, of building and celebrating the
predictable and superficial (think about all the megalomaniacal clutter on
Facebook) in the name of declaring – almost desperately so – a uniquely
meaningful identity…
(for the full
review of that show, click on this link
- http://artwach.blogspot.com/2016/02/event-horizons.html )
While you may or may not agree with that
particular read on the sheer hugeness of the faces, the larger-than-life aspect
of Markwald’s work is still present in her current show at Malone Gallery. For
all of her big paintings’ association with photography, it wouldn’t be accurate
to consider them as Photorealist in the purest, formal sense of the term. From
a distance they certainly do appear to be startlingly faithful imitations of
human countenances. But this convincing mimeticism is momentary, soon enough
giving way to the ubiquitous presence of the artist’s hand. What we actually
see is the brilliant instrumentality of Markwald’s brush as authoritative
blender of so many accumulated and harmonized marks. Their kinship to
photography is essentially superficial – superfacial, if you will - resting
primarily in the uniformity of smooth, flat surfaces.
The truly “New
Chapters” in this exhibit, however, are to be found in the groupings of much
smaller (8” x 10”) paintings on panels. If the scale of those large canvas
paintings could arguably be construed as a commentary on our social obsession
with celebrity or standing out from the crowd, then there’s a fascinating irony
at work here. Markwald’s “Anonymous” portraits in oil, despite their
nondescript character and relatively tiny size, do indeed stand far apart from their
monumental counterparts. Yet in their smallness, they shout their individual
identities with remarkable intensity.
This is not
Markwald the deft illusionist, but rather the equally adroit abstractionist,
wholly surrendered to the real essence of her craft – the skillful manipulation
of paint across a flat plane. I’m not even sure that “portrait” is the most
appropriate designation for these intimate, raw, highly tactile visions. To the
extent we can call them faces, they’re alternately dreamlike, disquieting, even
alien. Perhaps any one of them could just as well be called a haunted
still-life, or ghosted landscape. In their bold distortions or denials of the
familiar, they’re nonetheless eminently true to themselves.
PHOTOS, from top:
all “Abstract Anonymous Portraits,” oil on panel, 8” x 10” / courtesy https://markwaldstudio.weebly.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment