NEPTUNE'S "JANUARY": FULL OF COLOR,BUT NOT MUCH PLAY
by Claudia Rousseau
January 20, 2010
The "January" exhibit at Gallery Neptune in Bethesda is all about color - bright, warm and inviting. In the smooth, modern setting of the gallery's architecture, these works, by seven gallery artists, are bright spots of engaging imagery. Although certainly not homogenous in any sense, all the works share a distinct duality: colorful, even childlike at times, but certainly not without a dark side.
Take, for example, the toy-inspired work of Elaine Langerman. Starting with wood and metal parts, and in some cases, actual toys, Langerman creates three-dimensional works that can, most often, be disassembled and rearranged. "Merry Go-Round" appears to be based on the top-like toy that has a bell inside that chimes when spun or balanced. Thickly covered, as are all Langerman's works, with layers of glossy acrylic paint applied with dental instruments, little rocking horses go around a center post topped with a cat head. Now, this may sound playful, but there's something undeniably bizarre about a cat head on a stick surrounded by rocking horses on a brightly colored half ball that chimes when touched.
The "hidden noise" inside the piece makes me think of Duchamp's work of that name ("With Hidden Noise") in which an unknown object rattles inside a ball of twine. This reference to the grand master of games not for children accents the dark surrealist feeling of not only this, but all of Langerman's works in this exhibit.
Perhaps most interesting in this surrealist vein is "Bird's Eye-ful" that features a series of theatrically painted boxes stacked to resemble some sort of monument. At the top an enormous blue eyeball rests in a little cup. The boxes are set on a tray with wheels, like a miniature parade float or a pull-toy.
Both Albert Schweitzer and Ed Bisese employ cartoon-like styles, but neither is terribly funny. Ironic comedy with a dark twist seems more their intent. Schweitzer's work is more "outsider" inspired, and more expressionist in technique. His three-dimensional relief "Stick'em Up" is childlike in style, but literally brutish in subject. Reminiscent of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Coney Island" and "String around Beckham" feature cartoonish macho men admiring each other. The latter work, in mixed media on paper, contains a reference to the controversial British soccer player, and features golden glitter in its center. Both works have the sense of being amusing with an undertone of something sinister.
Bisese's paintings are less expressionistic, but equally "raw" and darkly comical. "Caper" is typical of many of this artist's works that focus on one figure, with an improbably large head and bulbous body, doing odd things in a colorful but surreal setting. Here the figure, dressed in bright blue, leans over to don a primitive-looking head mask with rows of big teeth. These paintings are effective because their carefully detailed cartoon style suits the illogic of their subjects. A sense of threat combines with a highly intelligent ironic wit.
The painted works of Wayne Paige are striking formally and for their particular imagery. Using a repeating figure abstracted from an old-fashioned clothespin, Paige creates works that seem like fables, strange dream worlds of black silhouettes and pointillist blue landscapes, punctuated by hot orange halos. In "Fallen Giants," a two-part work, very large versions of the black figure seem to have fallen over curved hills painted with small dots of blue and orange. Small orange versions of the figures float like schools of fish in black ribbon-like roads, while mid-sized versions stand alongside. One "giant" has ladders lying over it, recalling the Lilliputians climbing over the "giant" in "Gulliver's Travels." Although the black forms themselves aren't threatening, the entire concept feels nightmarish. A word play on the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, "The Colossi of Roads," shows a huge clothespin figure striding over two ribbon highways filled with the little orange figures.
This kind of punning title seems to appeal to Paige who also uses them for his pen and ink drawings. From the "01" series, in which the clothespin figures are put in densely drawn settings, "Binary Blues" (a figure crying O's and 1's) and "Men Rays" (referencing the photographer Man Ray)are technically brilliant; they look more like etchings than pen drawings.
With their combination of volumetric pointillist settings, color contrasts and flat silhouetted figures, the large paintings are compelling. Yet, I was drawn to Paige's smaller ink drawings where the concentration of flowing lines holds the viewer more completely in its thrall.
Elyse Harrison prepares her series of panels with textured color areas by mixing various media, such as gel, with the paint. On top of this, she traces geometrically abstract figures with thick black outlines. With their block-like color forms, and the black outlines, paintings such as "The Next Mother" have a Cubist look, specifically reminiscent of Fernand Leger. But they also project that equivocal emotional content, pervasive in this exhibit, existing somewhere between play and fear.