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"Four Play' at Lineage Gallery
A carnival for the thoughtful
(and a nightmare for the rest)
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
Image-based art can be as exact as a photograph or, as four talented artists appearing at Lineage Gallery demonstrate, anything the artist chooses to make of it. This is a very large display of 76 pieces, some no larger than a postcard. I suppose the common bond is that all of the pieces are, in some way, “fantastic.” But fantastic is an inexact description at best. Jophen Stein’s whimsical pieces are “fantastic.” Kris Kuksi’s surreal toy assemblages are “fantastic.”
It might be more precise to say that, rather than arising from a visual stimulus—say, a sunrise over a cornfield on a June day—these pieces arise from ideas, concepts, wordplay, jokes. They are explications of ideas and they assume their fantastic guises because the ideas themselves demand it.
Joining Stein and Kuksi as the “Four Play” quartet are Tim McCormick, whose work seems the most “painterly,” and Pat Rocha, whose work conveys a visual impact completely opposite to McCormick’s. All four artists are quite unique, although Kuksi’s assemblages of tiny figures engaged in titanic struggles are the most engaging, and Rocha’s dead-on unblinking surrealism is the most idea-oriented. If Rocha hasn’t already been offered commissions as an illustrator, some enterprising publisher should step up to the plate.
I think it’s a wonderful thing that such shows surface periodically. They’re necessary to clear the air, “to purify the language of the tribe” as Mallarmé would have it. I wouldn’t say that the paintings of “Four Play” celebrate our dreams. They seem more attuned to our nightmares: abuse, militarism, alienation, lack of love, surfeit of love—all are on display here. “Four Play” is a sort of Bruegel-esque affair, a carnival for thoughtful people.
(and a nightmare for the rest)
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
Image-based art can be as exact as a photograph or, as four talented artists appearing at Lineage Gallery demonstrate, anything the artist chooses to make of it. This is a very large display of 76 pieces, some no larger than a postcard. I suppose the common bond is that all of the pieces are, in some way, “fantastic.” But fantastic is an inexact description at best. Jophen Stein’s whimsical pieces are “fantastic.” Kris Kuksi’s surreal toy assemblages are “fantastic.”
It might be more precise to say that, rather than arising from a visual stimulus—say, a sunrise over a cornfield on a June day—these pieces arise from ideas, concepts, wordplay, jokes. They are explications of ideas and they assume their fantastic guises because the ideas themselves demand it.
Joining Stein and Kuksi as the “Four Play” quartet are Tim McCormick, whose work seems the most “painterly,” and Pat Rocha, whose work conveys a visual impact completely opposite to McCormick’s. All four artists are quite unique, although Kuksi’s assemblages of tiny figures engaged in titanic struggles are the most engaging, and Rocha’s dead-on unblinking surrealism is the most idea-oriented. If Rocha hasn’t already been offered commissions as an illustrator, some enterprising publisher should step up to the plate.
I think it’s a wonderful thing that such shows surface periodically. They’re necessary to clear the air, “to purify the language of the tribe” as Mallarmé would have it. I wouldn’t say that the paintings of “Four Play” celebrate our dreams. They seem more attuned to our nightmares: abuse, militarism, alienation, lack of love, surfeit of love—all are on display here. “Four Play” is a sort of Bruegel-esque affair, a carnival for thoughtful people.
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