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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Mimetic Bodies @ Ex Nihilo Gallery
Wednesday 21 July @ 17:02:50 |
 by Valerie Valentine
Lowertown Saint Paul still has its art makers, movers and shakers. The gracious hostess and gallery director Heather Kim of Ex Nihilo presents an eclectic array of new work by local artists. Kim started the gallery in 2003, ex nihilo (Latin: means “out of nothing.”) You could say these works, and innovative arts in general, are conjured from nothing more than an idea, to become something concrete and thoughtfully portrayed.
The collaborative works in Ex Nihilo are seeds for finished works by Ashley Duffalo and Eric Lunde. In “Mimetic #2,” figures face off in silhouette upon silhouette, and a dead bird sketch links figures and colored cubes. Swatches of translucent color glommed onto crumply tissue paper add sensual visual texture. Gentle colors and attractive bodies warm the eye. Varied size elements displace and disorient viewers. A bird corpse as large as five human forms throws perspective into a whirl. One is invited to consider, “what if?” and “why not?”
 Duffalo’s more polished pictures are small cubes of blue, green and pink that chunk concepts together. A series of “found birds” stick together in a contorted flock. The unusual method of pen sketches on painted canvas appears natural from afar, in a computer graphic kind of way. The lines look digital in their precision, yet under scrutiny they reveal themselves as hand drawn with pressure points in the surface. Human bodies bend forward and back on strings. The sketches are strictly realistic, lifelike portrayals that become surreal only through their puppetry appendages.
Lunde’s work is diverse, featuring charcoal-y sketches incorporating text, to found art sculpture. Lunde’s Warhol-like sensibility links disparate pieces by transfiguring pop symbols and consumer items. Paris Hilton’s face and a box of Lucky Charms alike are melted sideways in repeated patterns. The images distort at sharp sideways angles, as though viewed through a magnifying glass from an uncomfortable, neck-craning position.
By flattening recognizable bits, Lunde removes their authority over what they are. In the same way culture adjusts daily to the digital warp of imagery, through airbrushed idealism and glamorized marketing, Lunde manipulates viewers to reconsider what’s presented from a less pleasing angle. Squashed boxes become more like compacted trash than fun food for children. Ms. Hilton becomes more and more transparent, eventually evaporating into a line. The same can be said of Lunde’s dragsters in the AZ gallery, where Lunde has erased the pencil drawings, but the cars’ outlines remain. Erasure is anti-art art.
The “Mimetic” pieces achieve their definition (imitative) through repetition of Lunde’s painterly materials and Duffalo’s human shapes and bird sketches. These studies integrate separate stylistic elements of the individual artists, succeeding in harmonic combination.
Mimetic Bodies: Eric Lunde & Ashley Duffalo continues through July 31. Ex Nihilo Gallery, 308 Prince St., Suite 230, St. Paul. 651-291-5991.
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