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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Right-Handed Artists @ City Art Gallery
Wednesday 20 August @ 12:05:26 |
 by Valerie Valentine
Twin Cities artists need space to show work, and they need it bad. Artists Xerox work and tape it to bathroom stalls, set up vigilante booths on the street, and rally for shows with crazy elite galleries. They need space so they can show their stuff, sell it and get on with their life. “Selling it to whom?” remains a question sporadically answered by a vast and varied demographic. Often times I see artists selling their work to other artists—kind of an incestual but comforting relationship.
"Group Together" by Brian Casey
City Art Gallery shows the desperation of local artists to get their work out in public. This space is tiny, not much larger than a bedroom. Though it is worth noting, galleries come in much smaller sizes, like the claustrophobic indie galleries of New York City.
Brian Casey and his wife pay the bills, but City Art is designed as a co-op, and opened in December 2002. The fluorescent lights emit a cringe-worthy harshness. Paintings and photographs would be washed out by such rays, but the salon-style hanging clutters so many works together that the glare is mildly absorbed.
So, in this unsavory environment (despite its cozy nestling on the quaint Grand Avenue) we find four accomplished artists. The artists, each worthy of his or her own show, are stuffed together in this space under the tenuous theme of “Right-Handed Artists.”
Brian Casey’s ink and line drawings play up the naïve aesthetic. Figures appear to have been drawn in one swoop, without lifting the pen from the paper. Each picture captures a vignette, summed up by a quirky title, like “Make a Purple Baby.” His larger paintings on canvas are combinations of Picasso’s abstract figuring and Mark Rothko’s dreamy coloration. Characters glow ghostly white, surrounded by vibrant color.
"The Secret" by Tara Patty
Tara Patty documents a culture different from our own, yet links viewer and subject’s lives though pictures of daily life. Her timeless black and white portraits show Mexican and Cuban families, young and old. One photograph called “The Secret” tantalizes with precious youth and exotic eyes. The girl on the far right’s pensive distraction troubles the mind. Still, we observers only look into the foreign other, we don’t experience it. Patty’s ability to meet and communicate with her subjects is notable. Her photos show the lands are not so strange at all. Everybody has ancestors. We all grow old.
Victor Pedelty plays the game in which viewers ask the classic question, “What makes this art?” Think of Pollock and Kandinski’s paint tantrums where the artist documents random energy of a moment, an emotional or psychological landscape. With names like “Attention Deficit Disorder,” Pedelty makes an argument that a pointed title can frame an abstract work to give it meaning.
Gary Ivan works under the premise that mood is as important as medium. His portraits in oil crayon on paper, feel epic in depth, hitting life’s big bases: birth, sex and death.
So much art is great to see, but eyes need to breathe. Artists need more spaces.
Right-Handed Artists continues through Sept. 30. City Art Gallery, 1820 Grand Ave., St. Paul. 651-698-4701.
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