Installation view of “The Lesser Chaos” at Salt Lake Community College with, from left, Darryl Erdmann’s “Solo,” Juan Gasca’s “Figura Metamorfica”, Richard Taylor’s “A Certain State of Grace,” Rachel Henriksen’s “Dialogue of Opposites” and Martin Sanchez’s “In the Beginning.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.

In a vitrine in the lobby of the Library of Congress lie the objects that were in Abraham Lincoln’s pockets when he was shot, one of which is a pair of reading glasses repaired with string. Contemplating these real objects is about as close as one can come today to the physical reality of the 16th U.S. president. Over in the Smithsonian, there’s a half-nude statue of George Washington, done in the Greco-Roman style, that is ten-feet tall. While its 12 tons of marble are real, the portrait is an abstraction. The title of the current exhibition in Salt Lake Community College’s State Street gallery, The Lesser Chaos: Choosing Abstraction Over Reality, refers not to the actual distinction between two modes of being—a matter that still flummoxes philosophers and linguists—but to a long-accepted division in art between two styles of representation. It’s a difference that has fallen out of favor along the leading edge of art, leaving a vague distinction that the 37 paintings and sculptures in The Lesser Chaos—abetted by 17 more across the foyer in a companion exhibit, Games We Play—illustrate through a number of revealing examples.

A couple of paintings in Lesser Chaos demonstrate the basics of abstraction. Cara Jean Hall’s “Powder Day Pine” emerges from a realistic view of nature, from which individual details were removed even as an implied design was revealed. In addition, elements of the artwork’s medium, like brush strokes, textures and stenciling, have been given emphasis equal to the organic design DNA gives the trees. The result has clearly been drawn from visible nature, with the trees’ geometry extended into the sky just as light reaches down into the forest. In “Leaves On The Water,” Halee Roth abstracts the feeling more than the look of nature, which she achieves by using dye-based inks and bleach to produce aqueous effects that she punctuates with gold leaf. In places bleach literally draws color out of the ink, while overall the power of water to reflect or transmit light orchestrates a visual drama.

Susan Riedley has identified air quality as a major concern, a theme she explores in Games We Play. She supports this argument through her mysterious and provocative figures, which are painted alongside an encyclopedic array of skies and cloud forms. Both are painted realistically and are often shown interacting in ways that reveal the impact of humanity on the very air we breathe. They may well be the most realistic representations among the 54 works at SLCC, but they also make an abstract statement about the aerial environment we inhabit.

In “The Golden Mean,” Jessica Rasmussen focuses on the centuries when burgeoning science saw nature as evidence of divine providence. Each of her 18 transferred images is borrowed from a manuscript, language being second only to music in its degree of abstraction, so that she exploits visible facts to stress a concept. Central to making her point are the contrasts between her very neat and precise sources and the rough way her panel is painted, as well as the universal references couched in a local setting: a honeycomb from a beehive.

Installation view of “Games We Play” with, from right, Jessica Rasmussen’s “The Golden Mean,” Linnie Brown’s “Next Move” and Rummikub,” Rebecca Klundt’s “Sweet Nothings” and “Go Fishm” and Christina Stanley’s “Hide and Seek.”

The title The Lesser Chaos takes for granted that abstraction reduces the amount of disorder and distraction in a natural subject and allows the artist to turn what anyone can see into a personal vision. All art traditionally reduces nature in various ways, making solid objects flat, fitting landscapes on the page, and playing freely with colors. But a lot of what is called “abstract” art is really pure invention. Remarkably able to directly arouse emotions are those extreme abstractions that resemble art school assignments: color wheels and the like. David LeCheminant’s relief sculpture, “Toward Violet,” combines two- and three-dimensional geometry, fractals, and colors shifting from auburn to black, all in a unified form that suggests and makes visible things going on not just in it, but around it.   

One of the misunderstandings about abstraction is that its lack of identifiable subject matter makes it less accessible. Yet by focusing on overall form, rather than specific references, abstraction can invoke feelings directly. What you feel is what you get. James Rees’s gorgeous “Remnants of Dixie”—Dixie not a geographical region nor a state of mind, but a woman recalled by the artist—alternates between transparent passages through which the prepared ground is visible and opaque areas that seem to float detached in space. Paradoxically, one of the most solid parts is the hole in the cup’s handle. Rees takes us to the point where reality defies expectation, as though to visually make the emotional point that the survival of their stuff in the absence of a lost loved one can feel both precious and painfully wrong.

James Rees, “Remnants of Dixie”

So many abstracts offer viewers a choice: to appreciate their designs, patterns, or compositions in a detached fashion, or to engage them directly and ultimately more deeply through the senses and sensations. The feelings, after all, can be unsettling. Cheryl Walden’s blurry “Roller Derby” doesn’t stress anatomical beauty or grace, but the thrilling, yet violent velocity of the action. Lenka Konopasek’s “Seclusion 2” is like waking up in the dark, rubbing your eyes, and seeing ambiguous flashes of light. Now that artists no longer need to choose between them, abstraction and representation are tools or methods that co-exist comfortably and complement each other. Pamela Beach’s “The Part I Didn’t Plan” is as open-ended as a Picasso, invokes questions it chooses not to answer, and will stay in the mind’s eye long after more resolved portraits, the ones that answer all the questions, are forgotten.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.