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New Fontbonne gallery offers look at figurative art
(by Dickson Beall - February 17, 2010)
The Gallery of Art at Fontbonne University is currently showing its inaugural international juried exhibition, Fontbonne Showcases International Exhibition: The Figure Now — 20 selected works from 20 artists, chosen from more than 250 entries.
For those museum and gallery visitors weary of installation and conceptual artists presenting detritus from streets, basements and everywhere — along with a “big word artist statement” explaining what is often a ho-hum idea — this exhibition will be an endorphin kick. This is not just cerebral art, but art for the eyes, art that conveys a heady vision—and with some heart, as well.
Ellen Gochnour, gallery director and the curator for this exhibition at the Fontbonne University campus in Clayton, conceived of this competition to display artists working with the figure, using a diversity of materials and styles.
The exhibited works are primarily representational, presenting the human figure in thoughtful and careful ways, with time-honored materials. Several are made with graphite. Half a dozen or so are either photos or works where photography has been integral to the creation of the art and the figure. Eight paintings in oil are on view, along with a few in mixed media and a single sculptural piece.
Internationally known artists Sophie Jodoin, Alex Kamevsky and Nicholas Uribe constituted the jury for the competition. Included among their selections are four artists from Missouri, five from California and six from New York.
Joseph Adolphe, from New Haven, Conn., received first place for “The Shaman #2,” with oil paint boldly brushed, knifed and smeared onto the canvas. It is all the better for having been quickly executed, after careful study. Out of the shadows a man stands confronting the viewer, wearing nothing but a beard, holding a red towel before his knees. The figure, standing in a landscape of no-space, serves as a vehicle for the artist’s intrepid paint strokes of yellow ochre, burnt sienna and raw umber. This could be a nude model standing in front of an art class, but he is also Everyman, stripped of any sign of status or place.
St. Louis artist Julia Clift painted “Monika,” a work of oil on canvas. A young woman stands in front of what might be a chicken house or simple log cabin structure. What draws the viewer into this painting is the intensity of the subject, an intimate portrait of a rugged young woman who seems as solid as the cabin, a stable and dependable friend, both honest and loving. There is an appealing delicacy in the detail of her dress and the wisps of her hair against the no-frills background.
Bo Kim, an artist from Lake St. Louis, painted “Juni Memories.” I kept coming back to his work and puzzling over it. The artist began with a photograph he shot of a television image; a figure in cross-dissolve from one image to the next.
Ambiguity and discontinuity play in this closely cropped view of a crouching woman moving forward. The lower part of the painting depicts the multiple images captured from television. In the upper part of the painting, a crumpled dress belonging to the artist’s daughter is rendered not in color like the lower part of the painting, but shades of gray. Kim has used this garment as a shrouded element that relates to the crouched figure below. There is something surreal and provocative about this painting, and I found it captivating.
Many of the works in the exhibition have a “today” look of immediacy. The moods are of ennui or anxiety, a waiting for something to happen, yet also capturing the timelessness of history, fear, faith, courage and hope.
Several of the more conceptual works in this exhibition pull the viewer into one of the absorbing problems of consciousness, the challenge of time. This subject fascinates today’s artist and viewer just as powerfully as it has in a history of more than 20,000 years of figurative art.
Reflecting upon and questioning what it means to be human in the 21st century—and developing the necessary skills to express those concepts and feelings—is significant to contemporary art. Take a second look at figurative art, which can convey what it means to be human like nothing else.
• Fontbonne Showcases International Exhibition: The Figure Now continues at Fontbonne University’s Fine Arts Gallery through Feb. 26.
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