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Aleksander Balos: Martyrs and Sinners, and
Meltem Aktas: Paintings-"Mystical Realism of
Eastern and Western Spirituality"
Ann Nathan Gallery Aleksander Balos
A heroic age need not be a golden one. Indeed, the two are opposites. The Odyssey and the Iliad are as full of treachery and deceit, violence and cruelty, and an oft-times meanness of spirit, as they are of great acts and noble gestures. But the epics sang the deeds of men great in body and soul; mortal, but to be remembered over millennia, at homefires, Olympic games, at times of crisis... Witness the Spartans at Thermopylae. The Greeks set forth the ideals for inner strength, striving, triumph; a momentum to evolve. Kazantzakis, a Modern Greek, looked back past millennia to Homer, a primordial Greek, and then brought forth his modern masterpiece. Aleksander Balos, born in 1970, in Gliwice, Poland, is a Polish artist. And an heir to the Hellenes. Five impressive oils on canvas,"Martyrs and Sinners," now at the Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago accomplish in contemporary narrative and figurative painting, what Kazantzakis fulfilled in his modern sequel to The Odyssey. These oils unveil points of evolution in the human condition, with all its evil and with the heroic, its false steps and leaps toward truth. And the art confirms that the scrutiny of human form, and idealization of type has a very contemporary life today. Kenneth Clark, in his book The Nude, defined "...the basis of Greek art. It is fundamentally ideal. It starts from the concept of a perfect shape and only gradually feels able to modify that shape in the interests of imitation." And Clark concluded: "No wonder that it has never again been looked at with such a keen sense of its qualities, its proportion, symmetry, elasticity, and aplomb; and when we consider that this passionate scrutiny of the individual was united to the intellectual need for geometric form, we can estimate what a rare coincidence brought the male nude to perfection." Whether male or female, the human forms in these paintings make new the Greek ideal, and employ them in an allegoric drama equal to the Hellenic spirit. "Visions of Mercy" (74.25"x44.75") is the first of the oils on canvas. Art critic, Lisa Kelly Stein, wrote a fine preface to the eight-page catalogue for Balos's work and concluded of this canvas: "...the figures in Vision of Mercy are divided by their consciousness or denial of the apparitions falling from the sky." It is a testimony to the many values of pose and gesture in Balos's paintings that they allow a range of interpretation: and a viewer's perceptions may shift each time he returns to examine them. The central figure who stands over the seer clearly displays concern. The two foremost figures verge far more closer to an air of curious interest. And a fifth, left and at the back appears to look out at the land for the cause of the disturbance. But all have their gaze fixed on an immediate ground: only the man lying knows the cause of his distress. Lisa Kelly Stein notes: "...those around him try to grasp the situation but are limited by their own narrow understanding." It may well be that immediate concern masks against seeing the truly tragic fall; or, if the companions are indeed denying, rather than not perceiving the fall, there lies a deep irony here. In such case, "Visions of Mercy" may be a portrait of apprehension. And Balos may well have given us an insight in which mercy is reserved for one's companions; in the interest of self-preservation. This was the theme of poet, W.H.Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts:
Lisa Kelly Stein's preface states: "There is no absolute innocence or depravity, only complexity slowly revealed through individual perception." And one is forced to agree with her most central perception: "Just below his polished surfaces, which are full of idealized physiques and classical settings, human beings struggle with morality. And although Balo's characters appear in groups, almost every figure struggles alone." The oils of Aleksander Balos capture a spirit and a depth, akin to the Greek experience which pursues excellence, but which matures in a deep sense of tragedy. That the painter is aware, and intends it to be so, may account for his consistent figurative ensembles as actors on a proscenium. The bare architectural slabs arranged as steps, and the minimal recourse to non-human elements or props centers all attention on the figure as the artist's sole communication. Balos is eloquent in the language of the human form. In "Revealing Future's History" (44.75"x74.5"), the artist applies pose and gesture to create the feel of dizzying motion toward the right of the canvas image -- as if to reveal... only to halt the viewer's eye violently before a frozen stare. And the tensed concern, the enigmatic almost insouciant query on the face of the figure farthest right confirms... that nothing can be confirmed. It is a masterful effect, technically and aesthetically, and it is heightened all-the-more by what seems an indolent resignation of the foremost nude. The subtley of expression leaves it open as to whether her countenance reflects true resignation, apathy, or a wise prescience concealed from companions who merely enact a pretense to revelation.
Because Aleksander Balos does employ the nude as his grammar and vocabulary in art, his paintings have no need for overt narration or props. His work is an art of abstracted significance and tight figurative technique. A fine artist such as Jack Beal, in adopting the narrative series -- "Virtues and Vices," History of Labor in America," restricts a painting's potential. Balos's tighter and more polished technique, through the nude, is capable of bearing a greater range of suggestion, implication, and ambiguity; and thus it delves more closely and often painfully into the human condition. The content of Balos's paintings are open-ended. The viewer supplies closure in emotional response and meaning. "See No Evil" (44.75"x74.5") is a stirring example. It alternately frightens and infuriates, and does so in the quiet of a gallery hall. And, as with Greek tragedy, a viewer comes away stronger and perhaps clearer in mind. "See No Evil" contains much of what Kazantzakis admired in the Greeks -- a fierce soul. And a deep sense of the ironic. In the fore, the figure at left is turned so as not to see evil, while his comrade at the right wears a blindfold. At the opening, several viewers debated whether or not this was a feint, or whether this last figure was dying. Here, it may well imply an equation. At the left of center, a man, struggling in protest, is being forceably blindfolded by another. Coercion versus volition; blindness to evil done to another, or to oneself: the painting creates an impression that, again, it contains a cycle: sequences telescoped into simultaneity. It is Balos's refined technique and deliberate use of theatricalism, his referencing some of the compositional devices of past art tradition, which so concentrates attention on the individuals and their implied acts in "See No Evil." This century has seen approaches to art for which content lay in the manifestos and lading documents. Aleksander Balos produces art which involves viewers: which shocks, disturbs, puzzles; which, in short, has meaning. Critic Lisa Kelly Stein has noted the lack of awareness that so many of Balos's figures display toward one another. In each of three of the five canvases at Ann Nathan Gallery, however, the viewer is confronted by the direct gaze of one isolated face from within an ensemble. In "Revealing Future's History," a lone figure seemed to stop the implied revelation and bring the viewer to question in shock. In "Maintaining Equality" (44.75"x74.5"), an ensemble of five, again a woman in the Balos world stares out directly at the viewer. It would seem to be a tense, distant weariness that emerges. But whether she seeks the viewer's participation or aid; or questions the circumstance in which she acts is unresolved. It does have the effect of drawing the viewer in. And in an eerie way, it almost forms a Greek chorus of one among a collective antagonist. Among the five actors, only one is male, and this in itself confronts the viewer with the painting's title. It is a powerful, but perplexing work. But, as in much of Balos's art, the longer one views it, the more it convinces that it touches upon an essential truth. It is a truth one sees, and cannot articulate. It is right. Of the fifth Balos painting at Ann Nathan Gallery, "Discovery of America," (44.75"x74.5"), Lisa Kelly Stein notes: "...a large group stretched along a high landing greets an incoming ship with intense interest. But in typical Balos fashion we see only the ship's mast and the backs of these figures straining for a view, not what's actually happening on board." In the foreground, there are four gray and sinister human forms, one of which demonically sports a pair of small horns. At the right, behind and above the horned being, a lone woman in the painting looks out at the viewer, and gestures. In "Discovery of America," the scale of this woman is small, but she commands more attention than the large sails in canvas center. Where one might expect a exhortation, a chorus in solo, Balos seems to offer a Delphic oracle. History is never seen but in light of the ephemeral present, and, with hindsight, the discovery of America led to both triumphs and terror.
Philospher Arthur C. Danto noted that in 1984 he and art historian, Hans Belting independently concluded that art had not stopped, but that it had come to an end -- a conclusion triumphantly announced by Vasari in 1550, and echoed with unease by Hegel in 1828. In Danto's "Narratives on the End of Art" (ENCOUNTERS AND REFLECTIONS...: Farrar Strauss Giroux: 1990), he says: "The difficulty in our own time is that we cannot accept with quite the equanimity of Vasari that it should go on, having come to an end." Danto observes that "the century that followed Vasari's certain claim ... saw Caravaggio and Ruebens, Velazquez and Rembrandt, Poussin and El Greco..."; and after Hegel's pronouncement: "the next 120 years includes the Impressionists and Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, and culminates in Pollock and De Kooning." He adds: "...1600 until just short of 2000 is a long lapse to be that unstructured--that is, as "painting lived happily ever after." Aleksander Balos's art is a stunning achievement, but it is also important for the question of artists and art's history. Modernism did sweep away cobwebs from how we perceive art -- the explorations were salutary, and not just for the 'Modernists.' Like Kazantzakis in literature, we are able to both see art's legacy anew and freshly, but even more able to draw from it with clearer vision. The paintings of Aleksander Balos at Ann Nathan Gallery prove that, beyond all novelty in approach and technique, Alexander Pope was wise -- "The proper study of mankind is man." Balos conceives an art that endures, unveils, and invigorates our momentum to evolve. An heir to the Hellenes. And the Renaissance, and the Baroque. And none of these, but contemporary. Much as Kazantzakis drew from Homer, Aleksander Balos draws from an ever-renewing source -- the human figure as a language for the human essence. Balos uses it to unveil points in the evolution of the human soul. He can do this precisely because his command of painting and his power of observation give him the power to convey the nuance and the ambiguity of a creature which cannot live in solitude, and is still, long after the Trojan War, learning to live with others. The great writer, Goethe, once said that "everything intelligent thought has been thought already, all we must do is try to think it again." It rings true for art. Balos is rediscovering humanity. Note: A review of "Mystical Realism of Eastern and Western Spirituality," paintings by Meltem Aktas, will be posted separately. It is also on exhibition at Ann Nathan Gallery until November 15, 1999. --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. |
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