{"id":1897,"date":"2011-03-01T07:59:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T13:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2018-10-07T21:33:25","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T03:33:25","slug":"the-poetry-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-poetry-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poetry of Art: Susan Beck, Bonnie Sucec and Ryan K. Peterson at Finch Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cDistance<\/a>

\u201cDistance Looks Our Way\u201d by Susan Beck, hand-painted relief print, 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

Some art is as concrete as the arranged objects it depicts or as prosaic as the theories it attempts to illustrate. But there is another type of art; one that revels in exploration of meaning and metaphor, its abstracted motifs and iconography lacking clear subjects or narrative purpose. This art is poetic, and is best approached as one might approach poetry. With the exhibit opening this month at Finch Lane Gallery, a poetic sensibility is not only helpful but requisite to appreciate the fluency of meaning that is hidden within a visual labyrinth. Susan Beck, Bonnie Sucec and Ryan K. Peterson all approach their subjects abstractly with a sense of narrative that is open and ready to be explored without rational limitation, as one might approach the subject of a poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnother hardened expanse, once marked with occasional cairns
\nSpreads out ahead\u2013mountainless.
\nThe minutia of divots and pimples\u2019
\nOf furrows and flakes, lead the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

\u201cLet Go Damn It\u201d by Susan Beck<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

These are the words Susan Beck uses to describe her work in this exhibition, words which provide imagery rather than explanation, much like her paintings. Her works, in ink and watercolor, acrylic, mezzotint, and pencil, are distorted, abstracted descriptions of the literal: amorphous, faceless and mutated bodies engage in incomprehensible purposes. These images explore themes that support weightier ideas: anxiety, fear, contradiction and meaningless existence. Her visual realms draw the mind and the eye from one direction to the next searching for reason as one might do tied in a straitjacket. But there is none. The eye might think it \u201cgets it,\u201d but the mind realizes it doesn\u2019t and gives in to the works irrationality. Pieces like \u201cDistance Looks Our Way\u201d, a hand-painted relief print featuring two shadow-like representations approaching a great gulf, can sustain any number of interpretations. It might be said to be painted as Dante wrote his great poem, with an air of gravity and sublimity that can be greater appreciated as one finds significance in its obscure regions. In its expressive ambiance one might feel the universal awe of Van Gogh\u2019s \u201cStarry Night,\u201d yet this is sublimated by the anxiety of Edvard Munch\u2019s \u201cThe Scream.\u201d In another work, the emotive pen and ink drawing \u201cLet Go, Damn It,\u201d Beck reflects on universal ideas concerning the struggle of existence. The viewer is met with a Goya-like darkness, swirling debris and a stretched figure holding on to a rope. There is a grappling for reason, a lack of logic which finds the subject locked in an inexorably anxious state; the title of the drawing itself cannot be ignored. Is this an injunction to free oneself from burdens, or to resign oneself to the abyss?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

\u201cVenus in a Halfshell\u201d by Bonnie Sucec<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The visual playfulness of Bonnie Sucec\u2019s aesthetic stands in contrast to Beck\u2019s somber work, but like Beck, Sucec is employing a poetic visual language that uses more rhyme than reason. Her work, she says, \u201cdevelops on its own \u2014 starting with a fragment \u2014 the painting unwinds with twists and turns and seldom a solution.\u201d These gouache prints and oil pastels are, again, open narratives that may be enjoyed despite their iconography, which is itself, absurd. Her art is lush and alive and absorbs the viewer in its pastiche of style and motif and its\u00a0joie de vivre<\/em>\u00a0temperament. Her canvases have something in common with Marc Chagall, whose color cacophonies and whimsical iconography evoke a sense of mystery and wonder. Sucec\u2019s gouache, \u201cThe Sun and the Moon,\u201d is as lyrical as a sonnet, and compels a reading that looks beyond any literal sense of its subjects towards a liberated sensibility of color and motif. The Surrealists of the early 20th\u00a0century made ample use of the irrational and its sense of displacement to transcend limits of consciousness. In like manner Sucec\u2019s \u201cVenus in a Half Shell\u201d entices the imagination to meander through inviting imagery whose \u201cnarrative\u201d lacks a beginning, has no middle and will reach no end. These works encourage meaning by avoiding rational interpretation and submitting to depths of consciousness. The sensual experience of this visual poetry is its own\u00a0raison de \u00eatre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

\u201cThe Sun and the Moon\u201d by Bonnie Sucec, guoache<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ryan K. Peterson\u2019s sculptural works may be the most disturbing of the exhibition. \u201cI believe in a collective consciousness,\u201d the artist says, \u201cso I would like to think others might relate to seeing childhood monsters, stalking predators, metaphorical giants and the curious, not-so-subjective reality behind our eyes.\u201d Many of Peterson\u2019s pieces might be described as \u201cgrotesque,\u201d but as Baudelaire taught us, even the ugly and horrific can be poetic. Peterson\u2019s visual poetry invites thoughts of horror in the face of the uncanny as what we see might seem uncomfortably tied to the psyche.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

\u201cWhite Big Head\u201d by Ryan K. Peterson<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

His photograph \u201cIt\u2019s Looking for Me,\u201d a blurred image with a mysterious room, is a visual poem that might resonate with the subject of memory and temporality, but nervously so \u2014 when explored memories are often not fond ones. Ultimately we cannot escape our own reality, Peterson seems to be saying. His \u201cBrothers Bighead\u201d series featured in this exhibition consists of sculptures with internal dioramas that incorporate painting, LED lights and photographs. He says they \u201care dreams, phobias and personal imagery manifested in sculpture.\u201d \u201cWhite Big Head\u201d<\/em>\u00a0is a sculpted abstraction, with its oversize head and muscular though truncated torso, that is ironic and ugly and makes no sense outside of a poetic engagement. In it Peterson is reconciling reality as he experiences it and believes others do as well. \u201cThe world can be a troubling place for me. I see the suffering of various life forms around me and I resent those who inflict it. I even tend to resent life itself for allowing it,\u201d Peterson says. Like the work of sculptor Louise Bourgeois, in this absurdity can be found reality, traces of the real confronting us and our own reality with a crafty gaze in this manifestation of Peterson\u2019s psychology.<\/p>\n

The intensive aesthetic engagement found in the careful observation of the work of Susan Beck, Bonnie Sucec and Ryan K. Peterson offers a meaningful experience that will be frustrating to the literal-minded but rewarding to those who can approach the exhibition with the associative, sensual sensibility necessary for poetry. Beck\u2019s visionary works transcend being, Sucec\u2019s canvases explore imagination and consciousness while Peterson\u2019s works challenge reality, all in ways that transcend, explore, and challenge standardized notions of aesthetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some art is as concrete as the arranged objects it depicts or as prosaic as the theories it attempts to illustrate. But there is another type of art; one that revels in exploration of meaning and metaphor, its abstracted motifs and iconography lacking clear subjects or narrative purpose. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[1827,96,3298,1826],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-bonnie-sucec","tag-finch-lane-gallery","tag-ryan-k-peterson","tag-susan-beck"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/70.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-14 08:52:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39092,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions\/39092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}