Saturday, March 17, 2018

FRESH Narratives







FRESH Narratives

By Tom Wachunas

   “…In my juror’s statement from last year’s FRESH, I spoke about the presence of our nation’s political and social crisis that I saw in the works submitted. We are reeling in shock; now we begin to join together to heal, stand for the causes we hold true, and find ways to move ahead as one. FRESH 2017 explores new definitions of space and this new place that we must all learn to navigate and inhabit together.… If FRESH 2017 was a reeling in the face of a shocking new narrative, FRESH 2018 is about artists constructing a better narrative.”  - Artist Charles Beneke, Juror for FRESH 2018

    EXHIBIT:  14th annual FRESH, through March 31 / Summit ArtSpace, 140 E. Market St., Akron / Hours: Noon to 7 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays / Information: 330-376-8480/ www.summitartspace.org
 
   ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION Thursday, March 22, 7 pm / Free and open to the public / Reserve your seat at  http://bit.ly/2BBUzlq

   I’m very pleased to report that my mixed-media relief painting, “After the Sermon,” was selected to be in this exhibit, and grateful to be in the company of so many truly engaging works from 34 artists, chosen from 150   submissions. I wrote here about my piece back in October, 2017, so if you missed that post and you’re interested, here’s a link: 

 
   A particularly ‘fresh’ aspect of this exhibit is the adjudication procedure. Artist Charles Beneke was the sole juror for last year’s FRESH exhibit, and he was asked to return this year in the same capacity. In his juror’s statement (excerpted above), Beneke explains, “The organizers were curious to see how time and cultural movement in this volatile era could have affected the artists of our region and how any potential changes may have become manifest in the artworks they produced and chose to submit as evidence of who they are one year later.”  I highly recommend reading his full statement, so once again, here’s a link: 


   I didn’t see FRESH 2017, but evidently there were threaded through it manifestations of the sociopolitical Sturm und Drang of our time – our “volatile era.”  If I’m reading Beneke’s assessment of the current show correctly, this year’s installment is distinguished by a comparatively different kind of probity, a lens-shifting of sorts.

   Eminently noticeable in this exhibit is its pervasive inwardness - a palpable arc of personal introspection, discovery, and yes, mystery. The pieces I find most compelling aren’t only visually beguiling but also conceptually and psychologically insistent. Some of them keep singing in my memory like a song I can’t stop humming even if I’ve forgotten the words. 

   A substantial portion of the paint in Catherine Spencer’s abstract oil on gessoed woodboard, Separation Anxiety, looks like it was applied with a putty knife, erasing some shapes and color passages while simultaneously creating others. And then there’s that odd vertical divide right down the middle. It’s a stream of self-conscious mark-making that maybe wants to harmonize with its surrounds, yet ultimately disrupts the composition’s equilibrium. Purposeful, or accidental?  Anxiety indeed. 

   Robert Carpenter’s fascinating three-sided Sketch is a sculptural work made from wood, plaster, gauze, and paint. It’s an unusual spatial configuration that hangs perpendicular to the wall and has the look of an improvisation with scrappy found materials. The formal complexity of this 3D drawing conjures a wrecked building being salvaged and re-assembled, a ravaged space being repaired.

   Holy Games is a sprawling abstract work on paper by Jack St. John. His layered strata of acrylic, ink, pastel, and spray paint make for an active surface, seething with idiosyncratic scribbles, frenetic splotches, and broad scrapes. The whitish cruciform emerging from the middle of the picture plane (or is it being engulfed?) is vaguely suggestive of a figure, arms outstretched and dripping pink, as if attempting to embrace and unify all the volatile energy surrounding it.

   On a more charming note, there’s the shimmering Random Star Variations by Roger Benedetti. These brightly colored, very shiny (some painted with nail polish) whittled sticks pop off the wall and seem to dance with their own shadows. I wanted to see a much wider expanse of them, to be more fully mesmerized by this cosmetic cosmos. As it is, the piece is nonetheless a titillating evocation of childlike wonder.
 
   Amidst all of the remarkably diverse iconographic and material content clamoring for attention in this exhibit, it could be easy to miss the foam, paper, and metal piece by Carol Klingel, parts of me I know nothing about. From a distance you might think it’s an electrical wall fixture. Plug into it anyway. This close encounter of the tiny kind (approx. 5” x 3”) resonates in a large way, if only in its uncompromisingly enigmatic nature.

   There’s something almost primordial about the image of what might be smoke plumes, or a vaporous sky, set at the bottom of a molded foam box, itself looking like packing material. What originally filled those negative spaces?  In solidarity with the artist, there are parts here we know nothing about. At once inviting and elusive, it’s that proverbial song in the head again. 

   The words are gone, but the tune won’t let go. Art can be like that.

   PHOTOS, from top: 1. Separation Anxiety, by Catherine Spencer / 2. Sketch, by Robert Carpenter / 3. Holy Games, by Jack St. John / 4. Random Star Variations, by Roger Benedetti / 5. parts of me I know nothing about, by Carol Klingel   

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