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ART SCENE CHICAGO 2000:
Fine Arts Building Gallery
Part II A figurative genre allows a wide range of intents. All too often contemporary society neglects the sheer joy of the senses, much as it distrusts emotion, or is antagonistic to a counterbalancing 'public' persona. Ideally, these are integrated and work in a complex unity. The art of Andrew Conklin is both a visual pleasure, and a celebration of the roles men and women assume; roles serving as models in life, as mentors in conduct, as pleasures in themselves. Conklin does grant that Dutch and Northern Italian Baroque painting have figured strongly in developing his own art. And he shares a certain kinship with the 'experience of the world' which inspired many of those earlier masters. The artist himself has stated: "I want to show others that this traditional art form can lift the spirit with its silent explication of the beauty, dignity and grace of the human being." Artist and Model (1999) glories in all the above qualities. As with many of Conklin's paintings, there is a subdued, decorous Romanticism in subject matter and pose. And it reveals that the act of 'posing' still has much to offer as a language for public, social interplay. Like Oyster Bar (Oil on canvas: 40"x50"), also in this showing, or the works illustrated in Art Scene, Chicago 2000, Conklin's art as a whole conveys a sheer love of color, lighting effects, costume, and, above all, small groups of people in social gesture. This artist achieves a worldly theater in small scenes, and does so with an unapologetic desire for beauty and grace in a painting. And, it is still true today -- nothing engages the attentive eye as much as the observation of human nature, even where it is aware of self, and on its best behavior. Wallace Stevens's "Evening Without Angels," quoted in Part Iof this review, was prefaced by that poet with a quote from Mario Rossi...
It encapsulates the art of Andrew Conklin, and may well be what links many of the seven artists in this exhibition. Andrew Conklin studied at the American Academy of Art, Chicago, and then the National Academy School, New York City. He went on to the Art Student League of New York, where he studied with portraitist Aaron Shikler and painter-illustrator David Levine. Between 1989 and 1997, Conklin studied independently in Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, England and France.
In recent decades, there has been a move among many contemporary artists to reexamine past masters. And one finds also an attraction to visual experience as an end in itself: a sensual pleasure for the eye, without a compulsion to follow the dictates of fashionable philosophies or manifestos. Helen Oh paints on copper panels, employing an oil technique developed by 16th century Flemish artists. Ho's paintings are still lifes; polished, rich in the use of glazes, with a varied, subdued palette, and balanced, harmonious composition. Helen Oh attended the Art Students League of New York, School of Visual Arts, and National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York. She also studied with Aaron Shikler and David Levine.
The earlier work of Kathleen King emerged from the artist's interests in floral-landscape genres, and has been compared to the art of painter, Joseph Raffael, and the monotypes of Michael Mazur. King cites as kindred inspiration for her recent work the art of Paul Klee, Joseph Cornell, digital artist Elaine Fisher, and multimedia artist Sigmar Polke. Kathleen King's training as a printmaker, and her recourse to what she notes as a hybrid 'collage mode' in conception, results in compositions which cohere by a subliminal logic, a 'rightness' such as found within dreams and hallucinations. The artist herself confirms that such is her intent: "Infusing images of dreams and fantasy with a feeling of tangibility has always been an objective of mine." While she uses a diverse array of technological aids and techniques, the work is true to the artist's observation that she subverts the computer medium, which she views as a toy. Kathleen King received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (http://uturn.org/king). Additional works by Kathleen King may be viewed at http://www.artic.edu/saic/art/projects/faculty/kingk-p1.html. During the Renaissance, writers and grammarians declared Latin a 'dead language'; while about them cultures were midwifing the birth of Italian, French, Spanish, Catalonian, Provencale, Romanian. The authorities, arbiters of culture, were not then aware, nor did they foresee a renewed world of things, feelings, insights and perceptions being reborn in new vocabularies and grammars, new sensibilities. Many of the artists in "Art Scene Chicago 2000," a select showing now at the Fine Arts Building Gallery, reveal that the figurative and realistic genres still have very contemporary avenues for exploration. Whether or not some Realism is moving toward phenomenology or approaching pittura metafisica; or rediscovering social personae; or honestly indulging sensualness, all seven artists offer an excellent showing. "Art Scene Chicago 2000" is on view until February 24, 2001.
Finis Part II --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: All seven artists are featured in Art Scene, Chicago 2000 (Crow Woods Publishing: 2000), which gives biographies, statements and illustrations of their work. W.H. Auden is quoted from Collected Poems (Vintage: 1991). Ezra Pound is quoted from Personae (New Directions: 1990). Wallace Stevens is quoted from The Voice That is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (Bantam: 1979). |
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