Curious Curvitudes

 

Curious Curvitudes 

Roseine

Holding

Backslide

Kick Off

Tresspassing

Isolation

Echoes

By Tom Wachunas

 

“…I invite viewers outside of themselves for a short period of time, offering a break from the bombardment of distractions, notifications, and news encountered on a daily basis.”  - Emily Bartolone, from her exhibition artist statement

“There is a poetic nature to minimalism that is about striking a balance between full and empty.”  - Jennie C. Jones

 

EXHIBIT: On Its Head – paintings by Emily Bartolone / THROUGH SEPTEMBER 8, 2024, at Massillon Museum Studio M / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon / Tuesday- Saturday 9:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 2:00-5:00 pm / 330.833.4061

                                                           https://www.emilybartolone.com/ 

 

Click on this link to the Massillon Museum podcast talk with the artist:

https://www.massillonmuseum.org/home/programs/massmusings-musem-podcast

 

   The acrylic paintings by Massillon-based artist Emily Bartolone are a collectively playful deconstruction of Minimalism and its often austere, grid-and-bear-it formal structuring. The elegant simplicity of Bartolone’s works is a gentle interrogation, if not an interruption, of Minimalism’s typically rigid, stoical aesthetic.

   As she puts it in her statement, “…The introduction of curved shapes allows me to push back against the bravado of minimalism and geometric abstraction.” She tosses curve-balls, so to speak, across the plane of the playing field.

    Not illusionistic in an outright representational way, these works are nonetheless fascinating in their suggestibility. The curvaceously contoured shapes are subtly textured, biomorphic forms rendered in beautifully nuanced hues -  what Bartolone calls “anthropomorphized.” They bring to mind floating body parts in varying attitudes, positions, profiles.

   These are little paintings – usually around 12” x 9”. Yet even on this small scale, there is an uncanny largeness in the way they exude an immersive  intimacy, a poetic personal narrative. Their intimacy is often punctuated, indeed augmented, by a single tiny colored dot or circle situated at a particular spot in the field of the painting. Maybe think of these focal points as rest stops on your journey as viewer. They remind me of looking at maps of locations that include a flashing arrow indicating, “You are HERE.”

    Where’s here? A memory, an emotion, a friendly encounter, a dilemma, a funny moment? Bartolone’s titles – such as Blues, Holding, Tresspassing, Isolation, Kick Off – are delightfully curious invitations. From passive resting to active looking somewhere just around the next bend, can you…relate?

   Enjoy your trip.

Deep See Risings

 

Deep See Risings 

Living in the Past

Behind the Veil

Unmasked

Transference

Portrait of a Dream

Waiting

Metamorphosis

By Tom Wachunas

“Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding. It puts you in a state of reverberation.”  - Philip Guston

“Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.”  - Chuck Close

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”  - Jackson Pollock

“Painting is by nature a luminous language.”  - Robert Delaunay

EXHIBIT: SUBCONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION – Paintings and ink drawings by Christopher Duncan / at The Little Art Gallery - located in the North Canton Public Library, 185 North Main Street, North Canton, OH / through August 31, 2024 / Viewing hours are Mon.-Thurs. 10am to 8pm, Fri. 10am to 6pm, Sat. 10am to 4pm, Sun. 1pm to 5pm

https://studioduncan.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEUgSdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVq6GX4gY9fNulffF0xzA6_reVBTtYyqonplrKvClbeA2eidNxPDj-aU6g_aem_h6pxk3HZdKeqA0bkr-V  

 

alchemy (noun) / 1.   a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of physical materials /  2.  a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way / 3. an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting .

[please note: while this exhibit includes several  arresting pen and ink drawings, my focus in this post is on the artist’s paintings]

   And here’s a wondrous alchemy from Beloit, Ohio - the abracadabrisms of Christopher Duncan. He turns canvases coated with acrylic paint into compelling eureka meditations. More than just exquisite abstract images executed with mesmerizing panache, his uniquely spectacular paintings are metaphysical portals into supernatural realizations.

   In his artist statement for this exhibit, Duncan has written that those realizations have sprung from his navigating the abundance of images that flow through his mind “…like a raging river.”  In navigating that raging river, he engages “…the act of remembering while swimming against the current of conscious thought.”  In doing so, he tells us that his paintings “… render their own realities. They are worlds in and of themselves. They are self contained microcosms which openly defy the drone of collective thought and run wild through the fields of possibility.”

     In these INTUITive close encounters of the subconscious kind -  into-ITnesses, if you will –  there is often a surreal propinquity of cerebral thresholds in constant motion and flux, straddling and sauntering through liquid, folded boundaries between empirical facts and mystical secrets, between the mundane and the spiritual. Transportive and transfixing traces of seemingly familiar phenomena are layered, entwined, and otherwise swirled into both earthbound and cosmic dimensionalities. Contractions and expansions. Blossomings and metamorphoses. Here’s the changeable weather, the stunning chromatic acrobatics, and the diaphanous luminosity of profound contemplations.

    Contemplations of what, exactly? The ineffable beauty of these paintings – their soulfulness  - is all the more meaningful when we look at them in light of Duncan’s own words: “Like everyone, I have struggles. But I find meaning and purpose in every aspect of creating. One footstep followed by the next… It is a continuum – a work in the hands of one greater than me…”

   Think perhaps of that one greater than the artist as the ultimate inspiration, the perfect alchemist, the hand of a super-collaborator. And what greater collaborator is there than the Creator of creativity itself?  From his so-called subconscious, the artist rises step- by -step  to an invigorated and edified consciousness of sensual ethereality.

   With that in mind, look into these paintings, these continuums, and be…blessed.