Screened In - Adam Lesh @ Woodpecker's Muse

Adam Lesh’s Screened In at the Woodpecker’s Muse feels claustrophobic. His paintings, imagery mediated by and through screens, disorient and close in on the viewer. Fascinated by the way that many of the most “real” experiences are often perceived through screens, Lesh appropriates subjects from both virtual and physical screens – webcams, cell phones, twitter, windows, windshields etc. Portraits clearly painted from a digital source, people filtered through the sickly green and white light only a poor quality digital camera or cell phone camera could achieve, speak to the significant connections one can build and keep through an artificial screen while at once keeping the viewer/participant closed off from outside physical reality, or the inability to truly experience while “screened off.” It is hard to deny the lingering questions: how real can it be or feel through a screen? What is it like to live a life screened in?

The most interesting piece in the show, “T-Mobile Metanarrative”, is comprised of nine panels hung together as a whole, a grid. Clearly part of a cell phone camera aesthetic, the images are unclear, hurried and glimpsed, as if the camera was unexpectedly shifted away before the viewer had the chance to recognize what it is they are seeing. This effect of being cut off and disoriented is heightened by Lesh’s palette, one of acid colors that speak to digital reproduction and modern technology. Some panels are overlaid with literal mesh screens, creating a subtle pixelation effect and further connecting the oil paintings to the digital world. Lesh states that he “intends to tease apart possible meanings, to reorient these dizzying phenomena from the quick time of bits to the slow time of paint.” “T-Mobile Metanarrative” achieves this in the most tangible way by suggesting the little parts of ourselves we involve within this world, filtered through these strange screens, and the various degrees and ways we reach to understand the whole. Lesh's paintings seem to beg answer to the question of "what is it like to live screened in?" I can't help but think the answer is a life dizzy and unsettled, solitary as a result of being held, by your own doing, inside. 

Screened In runs from now until end of March.

Woodpecker's Muse Gallery hours:

Closed Sunday and Monday.
Open: Tuesday thru Friday : 11:00 to 6:00
Saturday: 1:00 to 5:00

The Woodpecker's Muse is located at 372 W. Broadway, Eugene, Oregon 97401

Adam Lesh "Screened In"

At THE WOODPECKER'S MUSE

review coming soon

http://eugeneagogo.com/-screened-In-A-Solo-Exhibit-By-Adam-Lesh/e/EJSQVJW/

Eugene Collects @ Jacobs Gallery, Hult Center

Despite having a highly unattractive flier, Eugene Collects, now showing at the Jacobs Gallery in Hult Center, is very charming. A showcase complimenting art owned and loaned by local collectors, the artists featured range from 19th century French print makers and Japanese brush and ink painters, to contemporary artists working in a variety of media.

The painting that greets you upon entering the show, Sherrie Wolf's Red Tulip with David, is undeniably attractive and surprising in its date of origin. A religious tableau of David holding Goliath's severed head is partially obscured by a still life of shining blood red tulips, reflective of the violence of the dangling head. The content and the way it is painted, traditional, realistic oils with an enamel-like sheen, would lead you to believe this is a long lost painting of Caravaggio's apprentice. However, it was painted in 2007. Placed as a totem of attraction in the entrance, above all else it spoke to the wonder and appreciation of the beautiful object, the passion and motivation of an art collector. 

Another welcome, happy surprise was seeing work by a few "big names." There were two small drypoint etchings by Pierre Auguste Renoir (Renoir? In Eugene?), as well as another, really very perfect print by Albrecht Durer, Virgin and Child with Monkey (1498). Correct me if I am wrong but Renoir and Durer are not the usual suspects one sees around town. Seeing them in Eugene is a unique opportunity. 

The show also included a print by American Pop artist Ed Ruscha, Just an Average Guy (1979). A horizontal panorama of a lone miniature man standing and facing the brink of nothing, emptiness, was both humorous and melancholy in its acceptance of ordinariness. 

Another favorite was by artist Nicolas De Jesus, whose large print on amate bark paper, Pescadores, was a study in narrative. His figures communicate across the paper in a complex web of interaction, almost seeming to move across the dirt-earth landscape, presided over by a glowing red/orange orb of a sun. 

I had criticized the faculty show The Long Now at the Jordan Schnitzer for being overwhelmingly diverse and dense without offering any explanation. Eugene Collects is diverse in a way that works because it is a celebration of the myriad ways art can be attractive, bringing collectors, people who care about art, together with its creators. It serves as a welcome reminder that those people, the collectors, still exist. 

Eugene Collects is on show now until March 24, 2012.

Gallery Hours:
Tues-Friday: Noon-4pm
Saturday: 11am-3pm
One hour before all Hult Center performances



http://jacobsgallery.org/

http://www.sherriewolfstudio.com/index.html

http://www.edruscha.com/

http://www.californios.us/dejesus/

Benjamin Ficklin @ The Wave Gallery

I attended the Captured Distortion opening, a photography show by UO non-art student Benjamin Ficklin, the last cold Friday evening here in Eugene. Although it was chilly outside, inside of The Wave Gallery it was  crowded and steamy with heavily breathing twenty-somethings. The Wave is a really nice space, though, what some might call "intimate," although it was hard to get a real handle on the photographs since it was in fact so crowded (but what else to expect at an art opening). 

Choosing cheap film over digital, Ficklin's work registered as dream-like, filmy/filmic, and surreal. The photographs had the pleasing appearance of being "vintage" but in the modern sense where it was clear the grain and distortion was overtly intentional. I was reminded of my favorite mid-century British postcard photographer John Hinde, especially in the shots of the cathedral and daffodils. Although Ficklin's were visually engaging photographs, I find actual old photographs, such as Hinde's, to be significantly more interesting. 

A John Hinde postcard circa 1960's
(see below image for comparison)

What I like about Ficklin's work is its spontaneous nature, what Ficklin himself calls "impromptu" in an article  in the Register Guard. I think there is something to be said about the accident in photography, and Ficklin's photos do have a charming happy-accident appeal.

Ficklin and his work. I felt weird about posting a stranger's face.
This photo was not taken by me.

Ficklin also states that his photographs look "more like a painting than a photograph," and that he "wants to use the film as a canvas...to paint with light without anything digital getting in the way." I thought this statement was most interesting in the context of recent declarations of "Painting is dead," meaning its relevance is dying. I, at least, thought that this kind of movement towards distortion and painterly effects in photography, embodied by Ficklin's statement, only underscores the attraction of painting, and the permanence of its aesthetics. But this is a painter talking!

The show runs until February 17th at the Wave Gallery on Blair. 

Here is a link to the Register Guard article:

http://www.registerguard.com/web/entertainmentarts/27486999-41/ficklin-film-art-shot-benjamin.html.csp