Leave it to artists to push boundaries, explore uncharted territory and wield generally outrageous and inventive artistic vessels, ever experimenting with the supposedly strange aroma of imagery winding its way through their subconscious. Inhabiting that realm at the forefront of the visual reflection of a culture and its people, the image makers hold the power of experimentation and the ability to forge new, unique and often unusual glimpses into the beauty and reality of the human condition. Inspiring, mind-expanding and oddly identifiable, these types of expressions have the wherewithal to normalize some strange inklings, and even perhaps carve them as cool.
Watermelon Man by Rodney Greenblat is a delightful signed silkscreen in a custom frame made by the artist, a detail that places an especially nice focus on the tone of the work— it is both unassuming and humorous, cartoony yet maintaining the dignity of folk home decor.
In Man and Constellation by Pierre Yves Tremois we are instantly transported to the well worn path that is the everpressing human desire to contemplate the universe. The human form can be thought of as a microcosm of the whole, as is suggested in this dreamlike visual analogy. The uncommon depiction of body position has an offbeat appeal, alluding perhaps to the abruptness of recognizing the vastness of space, where one might stop mid-sentence.
In a piece that deftly covers many layers of emotion at once, Enrico Baj’sGenerale Nell'Intimita, which translates to General Intimacy, leaves the viewer perhaps laughing and also feeling deeply. The experience of intimacy is similarly a complex, human, beautiful and often humorous undertaking, nearly inexplicable except by way of the poetry of artistic expression.
And with After The Fact But Before The Flood Lawrence Weiner has made the letterforms his design medium. Simultaneously decorative and poetic, this silkscreen is unusually well suited for many different contexts, being light, open-ended, simple and elegant— and it carries a conceptual message while shrouding it in the nonchalance of a playful arrangement.
Joseph Piccillo investigates bizarre sensations that are off-chance not so unfamiliar, subtleties of psychology or physiology, in his gorgeous and intricate signed original pencil drawing Study February (1974).
In a 1968 silkscreen Nicholas Krushenick gives abstract pop-inspired imagery a more intense tone with his title White Smoke Red Sky — again, like the brilliance of so much pop art, the stylized, boisterous and fun rendering makes weightier concepts effortless to engage with.
For One Morning, the Masks Got Stuck, a signed 1972 silkscreen on shiny silver paper, Helmut Kand is somehow able to glamourize the inherent tendency towards metaphorical mask-wearing, an activity that is as basely human as this hallucinative rendering. Fantastical yet sincere, it lends sultry and spirited permission to acknowledge this charismatic behavior.
And Gottfried Helnwein encompasses the perfect combination of commentary, oddity and celebratory pleasure, his The Feast of the Animals revealing a beguiling scene, and a refreshing perspective. Even with his careful and sensitive technique, the contrast with such an outlandish offering is full of enjoyment.
