Review | There, spread out ov...

Generated on 2023-11-10 04:11:30

Result #1

The sky was dark and brilliant, the sky all it could muster. The air was so clear it took one a few seconds to realize that the blue sky was real.The photographs, all dated 1998, were taken from a tripod on a pole. The photos were taken in New Mexico, so they didnt appear to be made by human hands. The photos were shot on a Polaroid camera. Even though the camera always picks out the right sky, the sky in the photos was nothing more than a cosmic drawing. Its a synthetic construct that is artificially lit. However, one was able to reconstruct the shadows that the clouds cast with the assistance of a hand-held computer. The color of the sky changed, too. On the Polaroid, a brown sky above a purple sky was faintly revealed by a yellow lightbulb. The colors were so completely different that it took a few seconds for one to recognize the difference. The scene was just a photograph. All the objects were real, but only the cloud, which was artificial, was real.

Result #2

There, spread out over the point of view was a 180-degree panorama of the New Mexico landscape with highly variegated weather phenomena. Off to the west, the sun shot streamers through low-lying clouds. Off to the right was a rainbow. Lightning-charged viragos swept across the mountains in the distance. The colors ranged from intense yellows and oranges to dark blues and angry purples. Shadows from moving clouds slid over the rugged landforms. There was that unique smell of moisture in the desert after a rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The artist herself was present in this scene of intense intensity and intensified fine-grained detail, creating a deceptively bleak ambience.The paintings in this show were made in charcoal on sheets of graph paper. In each work, a photograph of the same scene was used to create a composite. For each of the smaller canvases, the image was cropped so that its edges met the center of the paper. These images were then used to create the larger composite. The resulting composite was then framed and exhibited for the first time in an exhibition.There was a tremendous diversity in the compositional choices made by the artist. The inclusion of photographic photographs made in previous shows is still very much in evidence in these works. In the past, when this art had been exhibited in other contexts, it had often been for purposes of determining the visual characteristics of a painting. These photographic images, however, were not as rigorous a means to an end as were photographic examples. This was not to say that the results of the process of composition and framing were not satisfying in themselves. The images in this show were also startling, even spectacular, in the way they offered up extreme beauty in the extreme detail of photographic reproduction.The show contained a number of works by Judy Parshall. These were black-and-white photographs that were only now being exhibited in the public domain. They were originally taken by a film maker and exhibited in many different contexts, usually in boxes that were hung on the wall. In these photographs, Parshalls approach to the medium of photography is also evident. The use of a medium that has become so clichéd and clichéd in recent years is more than justified. Parshalls work has always strived to maintain a certain beauty in the way the medium is used. In the end, the photographs in this show were no more beautiful than any other images on the same surface. They were ugly, obsolete, and dated.

Result #3

There, spread out over the point of view was a 180-degree panorama of the New Mexico landscape with highly variegated weather phenomena. Off to the west, the sun shot streamers through low-lying clouds. Off to the right was a rainbow. Lightning-charged viragos swept across the mountains in the distance. The colors ranged from intense yellows and oranges to dark blues and angry purples. Shadows from moving clouds slid over the rugged landforms. There was that unique smell of moisture in the desert after a rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. . . . The colors of the desert, or rather, the tints of sunlight, were dazzling. For these were the colors of the desert, the colors of natural weather, the colors of the skies, the colors of the desert. The artists surrealistic apparatus of natural colors, combining on a cold and warm palette, in the forefront. . . . The color vibrated. When you stopped to think about it, the sun looked almost as cold and cold as the desert—it had a warm feeling and a cool one. The sun always seemed to be at rest, so you had a feeling of being close to the real world.Somehow the palette worked here. The natural reds of sunsets were being constructed into art-historical motifs. For example, the shadow of a bridge over the desert seemed to float in the foreground, illuminated by a cool blue sky; a huge head appeared to stand behind the cloud like a madman. There was a well-defined contour line running across the desert from horizon to horizon; the contours of the trees and shrubs were created to resemble the contours of mountains. These trees looked like their natures had been burned away, their trunks and branches destroyed. By providing a vivid contrast to the orange of the landscape, the palette created a complementary tonality to the paintings.But wasnt there a bit of softness to this painting too? The natural and the artificial, the natural and the man-made, were coming together again. So perhaps it was not too much of a coincidence that the only figure in the painting was a child. If you looked at the painting, you wouldnt see him, but you would hear him, the child of the desert. In the foreground of the desert, which was the desert, was a house made of wood. It seemed to be a sturdy house, like the one the child lived in, or the one the artist himself had moved into.

Result #4

There, spread out over the point of view was a 180-degree panorama of the New Mexico landscape with highly variegated weather phenomena. Off to the west, the sun shot streamers through low-lying clouds. Off to the right was a rainbow. Lightning-charged viragos swept across the mountains in the distance. The colors ranged from intense yellows and oranges to dark blues and angry purples. Shadows from moving clouds slid over the rugged landforms. There was that unique smell of moisture in the desert after a rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. __________________________________________________________ Puckettes work, made between 1982 and 1985, is derived from his seminal work on paper, The Locomotive, 1940. Puckette wrote on the back of the paper: The scene is a collage, a real trompe loeil. A metaphor for the material universe. But even more, the scene is the boundary between man and nature, between man and the environment, between life and death. This is the most basic human experience, and the boundary between them is absolutely irrevocable. The universe is not deterministic, not predictable. Puckettes work is one of the most basic of all experiences, not necessarily an explicit one, but one that is always open to our experience and exploration. Puckettes work is not a cataloguing of the world, but an experience of it that transcends the realm of physical reality. Because his work exists within a continuum, the richness of his work is felt not only physically in the work itself, but also in its relation to the natural world. Puckettes work transcends the divide between man and nature, between human and celestial, between a purely physical and spiritual world.In their introduction to the exhibition, Puckette makes reference to natural world and man only in the context of man as well as of the cosmos. Puckettes reference to man is not only in his relation to nature, but also in the way he relates to man. The connection between the universe and man is that of mind, that mind that can relate to the natural world through logical thought. Puckettes logical and geometric structures produce a highly ordered universe. Not so much a coherent whole as a universe in which mind and body are one. Puckettes work is a very particular kind of logical activity that is both necessary and unlimited. His visual vocabulary includes objects and lines that are metaphorically arranged in the natural world, but that are not seen. They are constructed from physical, spiritual, and mental phenomena.

Result #5

. . .Something came toward us, like the darkness, at the end of a long, narrow, rocky path, the only way into the natural world, down an impressive cliff, or like a torch that passed in front of us. And suddenly, in front of us, out of the darkness, a great ball of light emerged, as though the sun were out of the sky and the moon were no longer there. That was the last place we were before we went over a cliff and came to a small dark room in the background of the canyon. It was empty, save for a few empty chairs, all placed in the center of the room and noisily blown up.The birds were loud. They screeched and swooped. We sat down on chairs and reclined on a chair to listen to them. They were just as different as we were, but they were all part of the same world. They all came from other worlds. And the birds came back to life again. Everywhere you looked, there was a difference—one of life. And maybe they could only live in this world, because life is eternal, whether in this world or the next. After a few minutes, the birds began to sing again.A young woman who had stepped out of the shadows, standing in front of a lit chimney, came up and looked at us and smiled. She had turned to the birds. Thats who she was. Thats who I was.Thats who I love.