Invention within convention. You have until 3:00 pm today to catch this show at Editions Limited (sorry, I meant to post much sooner). Chad Gallion's still life paintings have a lot of very intriguing spatial and tactile things going on.
He inverts the layering process, so that highlights are created from the earliest and thinnest painted areas. These thinly coated areas glow through, much like in a watercolor, and the unlit areas have a heavier, more opaque buildup. The visual impact is striking, and also a mindtrip. From a distance, one reads these from a conventional mindset, then as you approach, all those nearly bare areas that were saying "I'm real close to you", suddenly break away into abstract shapes that go way back in the painting.
The surface handling also reads differently from various distances. Upclose it reads as a dry, patchy, awkward surface, but then it melds quite beautifully into a lushly lit, cohesive vignette.
These also have bright blue outlines in various areas. Somehow, these charge the images without destroying the representation of a still life. I don't have the best interpretation for how/why these are working. They are still a bit of a mystery to me.
It's always exciting to view intellectually engaged work such as this.
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2 comments:
Nice review, is there a direct link to his work?
I can not find one, but here is an image and a mention: http://www.indystar.com/article/20110324/ENTERTAINMENT/103240306/Weekend-s-Best-Visual-Arts?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Entertainment
I love your new profile pic.
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