 |
|
|
|
Art Review Archives:
|
The World of the Spiritual Time & Life Building Arts Vision Inc. features: Pat Armato, Betty Becker, Kirby Briske, Rebecca Childers Caleel, Barbara Goldsmith, Christine Ilewski, Rita Dianni Kaleel, Kim Kaminski, Connie Kassal , M.E.Leach, Pennington McGee, Keith Peterson.
"The World of the Spiritual" is the latest of artist exhibitions organized in the Time & Life Building by Arts Vision Inc.. Paintings by twelve featured artists are presented to the public throughout a lower and a street level, while an additional exhibition room offers sculptural pieces and further two-dimensional works. "The World of the Spiritual" exemplifies Arts Vision Inc.'s commitment to bringing the works of contemporary artists to a wide viewership in public places. The Time & Life Building not only offers a daily opportunity to view fine art at one's convenience, but an engaging occasion to catch a response to art by a public beyond that of regular gallery visitors. There is no doubt that these exhibitions have stirred much deserved interest and won steady viewers. These twelve artists are represented by good work and several should certainly prompt a deliberate visit to the Time & Life Building. Christine Ilewski is a recent arrival to the Chicago art scene and this is her first showing in this city. "The World of the Spiritual" presents, on the lower level, three of her mixed media paintings. Ilewski has noted that "My inspiration for the series began while I was researching my grandmother's dances and coming across a quote by Isadora Duncan, 'for every emotion there is a movement.' This led to my exploration of movements in spiritual motion." As originally conceived, each panel is conceptually link to the article of furniture installed below it.
"High Jump" (86"x36"), shown here, most closely illustrates this entirety. The two focuses, a chair and a dancer -- a dancer in an impossible but somehow delightfully plausible instant -- convey an emotional state which I doubt even Isadora Duncan could actualize. It captures a glimpse of that human spirit which, if only in dreams and art, is unfettered by everyday physics. "Kick" (56"x36") further demonstrates Christine Ilewski's approach in this series. As in her other panels, the essentially monochrome background excludes any immediate localized context for the dancer, allowing the viewer's eye to place her with the area and furniture object beyond the canvas boundary. It is an optical strategy often employed in scene design and camouflage, and here it draws the dancer further out into the viewer's space. Whether intentionally or by instinct, Ilewski's choice of background color works well with the muscle tensions implied in her figures. In "High Jump" the light blue heightens the momentary repose at the peak of the act, before descent. In "Kick" the major lines of the figure and the brushwork are starker, more expressionistic, while the rougher palette contributes to a sense of earthy power. There is more of an athletic sensibility about the figure here, rather than a conventional dance aesthetic. The female form is not idealized and the action recalls that of a rustic folk dance, or the pagan Greek dance rhythm that was elemental to religious ritual. This latter animates much of Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring," which might well be the music of "Kick."
In "Bending Over Backwards" (50"x36") a cooler palette, in which blues and violets predominate, appropriately adds to the illusion of muscle straining against gravity; here one senses the play of balance and counterbalance rather than a primary movement. Ilewski appears to reveal an additional level of perception in her series: the act is always at the fore and it is the spirit of the dancer, emerging in gesture and motion, which transforms the dancer. The dancer sheds the mundane and gains a beauty in dancing and the painting captures that instant. Pat Armato has five pieces displayed in the upper room of the Time & Life Building lobby. Armato's "Spirit" (10"x9"x7") is a perfect example of art in which inspiration, technique and material (white alabaster) unite to achieve a palpable glow of vitality. Her sculptural creations often seem to recall a Taoist spirituality: as if the stone she works with has condensed from the surrounding air -- as if she were sculpting the emptiness and merely leaving the stone left to define a space. In "Spirit" sensual volumes fuse into a counterbalanced mass and allowing abstracted human forms to gravitate about a center filled with empty space. Her creative insight leaves the distinct impression that the central void is not truly empty, but a thing unseen that passes between the forms. I cannot image how magnetism or gravity could be sculpted, but Armato's sculpture intimates the potentialities. "Beingness-Doingness-Havingness" (19"x17") is another Armato alabaster, and although I do admit the title stymies me. But the work itself intrigues and allows he viewer his own visceral response. It is a satisfying work of sculpture. In this piece three distinct forms telescope inward and coalesce about a central opening. Or perhaps the motion is reversing outwards. Several viewers at the opening seemed to divide equally in their perception of the piece, but all agreed they sensed a dynamic focus and this, again, upon an empty core that seems to orchestrate the stone about it. Seeing the actual piece in three dimensions only confirms one's initial response. Patricia Armato's three other pieces in the show are "Embrace" (White Alabaster), "Pawns of Society" (African Wonder Stone) and "Hold The Thought" (Spanish Crystal Alabaster). Armato's works are very gratifying and constitute one of the highlights in a well-chosen showing.
Kim Kaminski's bronzes exploit the many tones and sufaces of bronze and, as in much fine sculpture, her use of these is as important as the forming of the medium. The deeply colored bronze of "Twins" works with the smooth finishing of the surface to suggest a hieratic or ritual object. The surface itself reveals subtle molding; one can just discern the incremental rubbing away of the surface by human fingers. The effect is as if the sculptor, in the act of creation, had prefigured a millennium of hushed approach and reverential touching of a bronze idol by devout communicants. One thinks of idol, for the piece evokes the stone and, more rarely, wooden totemic figures that mark certain Celtic and Slavonic pre-Christian groves in Europe. Below the monasteries of the Holy Cross Mountains in present-day Poland is a millennium-worn stone figure which even to this day rural folk come to touch for fertility. "Twins" summons up such memories. In some societies, twins are received with fear -- a splitting of the soul -- and in other cultures they are greeted with awe as a mystery within identity. In "Twins" the expression of the conjoined faces could as easily suggest a dismay at parting, as imitate the first cries of birth. The piece has a depth which branches out to each viewer's own reception of it. Each work of Kaminski invites a viewer to bring his own personal history before the piece as much as the creator brings her personal experience and personality into its making. "Twins" points toward animism: the mantel about the joint figure, and its embossed subcuticle at the frontal base, vaguely recall a growing thing pushing up against a counterweighting head cap. Kaminski's sculpture definitely draws admirers and elicits speculation and discussion. It is a sculpture that stays with a viewer.
Another Kaminski piece, "Tranquil Heart," displays a lighter grey-green tone, and a patina that again hints at a covert history for the object. "Tranquil Heart" suggested to some viewers at the opening an allusion to the famous 'bogman' recovered from the ancient peats of Denmark; while others divined an association with Christian images of transcendence. But whether the fashioned ring about the back of the head seems a laurel crown or a crown-of-thorns, this visage does convey a well-won peace. It is moving. One should go to see the original; it will provoke a empathetic response. The work of Barbara Goldsmith is known to those who regularly follow the art circuit, or who have visited the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park on McCormick Boulevard, between Dempster Street and Touhy Avenue in Skokie, Illinois. Her work, "Spread My Wings," is currently on display there. Arts Vision's show at the Time & Life Building offers a number of her works in concrete and fiberglass. "Duet" (47"x30"x30") comprises two halves of a sundered whole, but the embracing curvature of the upper area suggests an urge to reunite. An ancient tale of the Indian subcontinent relates that male and female are the two disjoined halves of a single being who eternally seeks to become whole again. Barbara Goldsmith's "Duet" seems at place with that eternal impulse. The rough surfacing of the pieces impart something immediate and basic to the work; a raw core of instinct from which corporal externals such as flesh and bone have been stripped. It is an urge, more than a representation, which Goldsmith has extracted from the material.
It is curious that in "The World of the Spiritual" at least two artists have presented a dualistic piece in their selections. Such may be indicating more about how the human creature approaches the world of the spiritual, than about the spirit per se. Artists after all sense the world as humans, through very human eyes. "Venus" (30"x19"x20") provokes a direct response. Since Paleolithic modelings the female form has been linked with curves and softness, real or representational, but Goldsmith's "Venus" arises from its base in a rough geometry of thick planes and with straight, almost crystal-like edges. It appears as an earthen Venus, a female spirit of geology. She has fashioned it in concrete and fiberglass and one sees little concession to flesh, other than an overall hourglass configuration. Although I did not realize it at first, I really appreciate this piece. It stands and confronts apriori expectations and then wins one over. It is an abstract piece of sculpture one can actually live with and repeatedly enjoy. Barbara Goldsmith's "Spirit" (92"x30"x12") comes close to an immediately readable interpretation. It has the feel of the Fertile Crescent to it, and accords more with our now assimilated visualizations of spirit. Whether its inspiration unconsciously arose from the Assyrians or Babylonians or none such source, it has a clean, direct execution that leads the eye upwards and culminates in a nimbus suggestive of hovering wings.
Goldsmith's "Receptacle" (19"x38"x19") is as unanticipated as her other piece, "Enigma" (58"x12"x11"), is aptly named. "Receptacle" cannot be seen as able to receive. One is thrown back upon the assumption that it must be seen as an entity which contains. With an obeisance toward the pyramid, it nonetheless more closely approaches the image of the stone monoliths and calendaric pillars of prehistoric Europe. And "Enigma" might well be an archeological artifact, were it not the creation of a contemporary sculptor from Skokie, Illinois. It is surprising how much of "The World of the Spiritual" draws a viewer toward a sensibility linked to ancient or primitive pieties. And it is difficult to decide whether this might be because the artists are tapping a basic, creaturely well of inspiration, or whether it is due to a reaching for the consciously unfamiliar in order to explore without preconceptions. "The World of he Spiritual" offers the work of twelve artists and the viewer will find something of interest and pleasure in each. This exhibition will continue until April 30, 1999 and affords easy access. The artworks on exhibition can be purchased and an interested visitor can contact Arts Vision Inc. for details. Marlene Marino and Joe Leonardi, partners in Arts Vision Inc., can be reached at 312/ 201-1776. The Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park, mentioned above, has a website: http://www.sculpturepark.org --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. |
Home | Art Reviews | Bookstore | eArtist |Galleries | RSS
Search | About ArtScope.net | Advertise on ArtScope.net | Contact
