{"id":548,"date":"2010-09-02T12:17:27","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T18:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2010\/09\/02\/mirror-mirror\/"},"modified":"2018-12-10T20:23:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T02:23:09","slug":"mirror-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/mirror-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror Mirror"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cOf Two Minds\u201d by Emily McPhie<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The predicament of art that takes the human figure as subject matter today recalls Dickens on pre-revolutionary Europe: \u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u201d On the one hand, with reading on the decline and the graphic image taking its place as the popular narrative form, illustration dominates the channels of cultural diffusion, multiplying familiar outlets and creating new uses for figurative art at every level of accomplishment. On the other hand, in an era when art is split several ways, including the divide between the elite, permanent avant-garde and the popular, low brow alternative that shrugs off critical scorn, the realistic presentation of our favorite subject\u2014ourselves\u2014may earn the money and have the mass audience, but it cannot command the respect still adhering to Giotto, Rembrandt, and even Picasso: all masters of capturing the inner dimensions of humanity through the arrangement and presentation of pose and expression.<\/p>\n

Curators Susan Meyer and Thomas Cushman have been contemplating this dilemma while discussing artists who continue to express imagination and individual experience through the human form. \u201cWhen we look in the mirror we know that we are seeing only a small, physical fragment of our being. An artist\u2019s challenge is to reveal more of ourselves to us,\u201d they wrote in their introduction to Meyer Gallery\u2019s new exhibit\u00a0Mirror, Mirror<\/i>. But it\u2019s not so simple as stripping away misdirection or tacking on contemporary symbols: \u201cFigure painters face the daunting task of painting a subject for viewers that we all know only too well. We know what a human being is supposed to look like. It can be unsettling to see ourselves portrayed as anything other than what we see in the mirror.\u201d And so they invited ten artists known for taking liberties with a range of approaches, including portraits, allegory, fantasy, narrative, and the nude, to submit recent work that might illuminate this dilemma.\u00a0Mirror, Mirror<\/i>\u00a0opens on Saturday, four days after 15 Bytes publishes this September issue, so we arranged to see as many of the works in person as were available for preview.<\/p>\n

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Fatima Ronquillo<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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Fatima Ronquillo<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Fatima Ronquillo\u2019s quirky, instantly engaging fantasy portraits are small enough to stand on a table, and one was so displayed near the entrance of the Meyer Gallery when we called. It was fascinating to watch visitors respond to it. Ronquillo is self taught, which may explain why instead of gathering specific techniques in isolation, she\u2019s lifted entire manners, which she combines in winning new combinations. Her figures borrow from Latin American magic realists like Fernando Botero, while her backgrounds recall the proto-landscapes of Leonardo and Giorgione. The uniform worn by the girl in \u201cLucy and Majorette\u201d\u00a0acquires an unsettling quality as much from resemblance to the pretentious, overly-ornamental uniforms worn by South American dictators as from the presence of this vulnerable, white outfit in a dark, looming forest. Yet most disturbing, because most disturbed, is the serious way this young woman holds in her arms not just a spotted pig, but a winged, spotted pig, cradled in her arms in a way that draws attention to the bright red ring she wears on her index finger. Another gallery visitor rushed up to one of these gems enthusiastically, and then, after closer examination, shuddered and mumbled a quiet demurral. A moment later, after a discussion of some of its references\u2014for example, that \u201dViola in Disguise,\u201d\u00a0with the curly evidence of a self\u2013inflicted haircut still clinging to her borrowed uniform, refers to \u201cTwelfth Night\u201d\u2014her excitement rekindled itself.<\/p>\n

In spite of the odd stories they enact in strange circumstances, Ronquillo\u2019s women maintain a feeling of repose. Not so Brian Kershisnik, a painter at war with himself, whose folkloric figures emerge from a textured world of paint the way Adam and Eve came from clay. Kershisnik\u2019s struggle looms so large because he has the most serious mission of any painter here. His deliberately naive style, while it makes him less intimidating, more approachable, is meant to uncover \u2014 from the illusions we live with \u2014 the true, LDS life. His didactic purpose reveals itself through a lack of context or setting beyond generic hints and the presence of occasional props necessary to a specific narrative. This pared-down presentation, with its emphasis on meticulously modeled gestures, can leave viewers aching to trade our messy world for the Platonic realm glimpsed in the painting. Just as war\u2014any war\u2014provides us with a life-and-death predicament in which our choices actually matter, so Kershisnik reproduces the mental world of a man who constantly questions human behavior, for whom everything matters. It works even for those not affiliated with the answers he starts from because his grip on the anatomy of gesture is so powerful. The woman in \u201cFind Me\u201d repeats her plea a hundred times, but it\u2019s the fervent way she rises on one foot that carries her intensity.\u00a0She could be seeking salvation or just asking for someone to cross a moat of her own making and encounter her true, inner self. The man in \u201cI Am Thinking of Something Else Altogether\u201d gazes straight as us, but points in the direction faced by his occluded profile, as if we have incorrectly guessed what preoccupies him.\u00a0He seems to be telling us, as directly as possible, that it\u2019s about another, less visible level of being.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFind Me\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cI am Thinking of Something Else . . .\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cCamouflage\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

In contrast to Kershisnik\u2019s characters covered in paint, Emily McPhie brings her similarly self-referential figures forward in meticulous flesh and places them in oddly detailed, meaningful spaces. Yet while Kershisnik\u2019s images come from ideas, hers emerge from interaction with her children and associates; her paintings are more fanciful, less pre-determined and controlled than his. Like Ronquillo\u2019s, they are also usually of women. In both \u201cCamouflage\u201d\u00a0and \u201cCome Sail Away With Me,\u201d the pattern on her clothing repeats in the wallpaper. Tom Cushman relates this device to \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper,\u201d but Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u2019s story is no more free of ambiguity than McPhie\u2019s vignettes. Such protective coloration is certainly better than the misleading, false faces some of her other figures have donned. Many of her characters contemplate flight, while others seem unwittingly or willfully oblivious to their plight. What is really \u201con her mind\u201d may slip past her effort to repress it, as in \u201cPuppet Show,\u201d by means of an allegorical tableau nesting in her hair. Puppets could be almost any responsibility, but in \u201cOf Two Minds\u201d one head clearly features children, while the other proffers a voyage of adventure.\u00a0<\/strong>Here she channels one of the most intriguing yet mysterious paintings in art history: an anonymous double portrait of the mistress of the king of France and her sister. The original was probably done to celebrate the mistress\u2019s pregnancy with the king\u2019s child, but 400 years later, even with the mother doing the painting this time, children remain a source of complex and unclear feelings.<\/p>\n

Ray Bonilla\u2019s naturalistic paintings stand apart here for their loyalty to visual fact, which here precedes action or events. Rendered in a space made palpable by an inky darkness, their thick impasto insists on the intervention of brush and hand. Although two of them portray outdoor scenes featuring anonymous city dwellers, they all feel more like portraits than anecdotes. \u201cBob\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>and the woman in \u201cRepose\u201d\u00a0and \u201cRepose 2\u201d are clearly specific individuals. But more to the point, in them and in \u201cNew Morning, New York,\u201d the figures emerge from darkness as though being drawn forth by Bonilla the way a portrait seeks to pull personality out of appearance. Even in the sunlit \u201cLiberty Ave 1,\u201d one feels how the lone grocer is coiled, waiting to act.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBob\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cRepose\u201d<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

If Bonilla\u2019s men and women are alive inside rather than in action, Chris Miles\u2019 fantasy figures can scarcely be said to have lives. His archetypes and the landscapes they inhabit often suggest how Henri Rousseau might have painted if he\u2019d had today\u2019s ready access to imagery, though Miles is a better painter, using Old Master techniques to make his stuffed subjects and the equally stuffed-looking landscape surrounding them appear round and solid. In a time and place where Disney movies are considered suitable as adult entertainment, animals may as well enact the human comedy. The question is, what is the value of the originals that become illustrations? \u201cRevelers\u201d and \u201cThe Concert\u201d are better seen in a child\u2019s book than on a wall, just as it\u2019s easier to picture \u201cPeace and Movement\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>on a greeting card. Yet occasionally, as in the cubist sea on which the \u201cCastaway\u201d floats,\u00a0or the way \u201cFriendly Game\u201d exploits the contrast between the angel\u2019s anonymous back, with wings and halo in place, and the leering anticipation on the devil\u2019s face, Miles pulls off something genuinely novel and, if not deeply moving, at least engaging.<\/p>\n

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scan 004<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cCastaway\u201d by Chris Miles<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Bronze sculptor Jim Rennert\u2019s command of anatomy, even under the anonymous cover of a business suit, is matched by a knack for creating original visual metaphors. Both here and at\u00a0The Face of Utah Sculpture V I<\/em>though, he tends to mythologize more than examine the lives of his \u201cMen in Suits.\u201d\u00a0Here, as elsewhere above, the temptation to speak of the artist\u2019s subjects as \u201ccharacters\u201d speaks volumes about the rise of narrative as a method in visual art. What that means for the future will bear watching.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMen in Suits\u201d by Jim Rennert<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Deadlines prevented us from seeing the work of Glen Hawkins, Fidelis Buehler, and Justin Taylor in person. Each is a well-known artist who will undoubtedly add a dimension to this exhibition. So do Ted Gall\u2019s category-defying table top heads, which to talk about here would exceed the available space. Trust, then, that the struggle to achieve legitimacy by incidentally or deliberately popular means has engaged artists of real accomplishment in a project that, if the results remain mixed, continues to generate art worth diving into, capable of going beyond the mirror to show us different views of ourselves.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n