Review
Featured in ’bout what I sees
So today, I said it. I hate paintings. It’s mostly true. I find it difficult to work with oil because of the lack of control of the coloring. Just a little too much of another color and I end up with a big ole pile of the wrong color. And when others use it successfully to explore its possibilities, I take awhile to figure out what’s going on.
Nina Rizzo for example, seems to be using it to complicate the image of her paintings. Compared to her submissions to the New American Painting publication, she has added alot more planes to work with. Ms. Rizzo’s paintings look like a shattered mirror piled on itself. You can see fragments of identifiable structures, but they are all jumbled up so that they have slightly different perspectives and light sources. The paintings in the main room suggested chunks of landscapes with parts of brick walls or fences and swatches of color and texture. The smaller paintings in the other room were more concise. They had a solid background and just a couple of objects stacked upon each other.
Ms. Rizzo appears to be playing with the depth of space in her work. By providing incongruent slices of what appear to be fortress/castle/brick wall and placing them in different perspectives there is a tension of having the picture plane flatten out or deepen into a niche. To heighten the disorientation of the planes, she adds some glitter or paint swatches of saturated colors, usually orange or yellow, colors that would make a good neon sign. So as I am exploring this surreal landscape I begin to move into an area where the colors are beginning to gray down, or lessen in contrast. Then its like, BAM! Orange triangle. The glitter is used similarly but has a more subtle effect as it is shinier from certain angles. Its all enough to make your eyes hurt. Ow. My freakin’ eyes!
Stephanie Wagner is more graphic. Blush! Using ink, paint and watercolor, Ms. Wagner gets her swirlies on. Her color palette remains for the most part girlie and lacy. Black, white and a fleshy tone are used alot. Her California Dreamin’ series and a couple of larger works use this rainbowy, psychedelic palette, which goes really well for the west coast imagery. In the largest work in the main room, those colors combined with the brush movements give the piece a jungle/ botanical feel. Things feel alive and disgusting, like some sort of fungal growth. Speaking of funky things, her titles are awesome. Take Me On, Like This and Like That and Like This, its like watching old music videos!
The forms in her work are playful and attractive in the sense that they resemble the doodling found in high school notebooks. Ms. Wagner seems to just swirl and swirl. On the other hand, the swirls can sometimes appear like chandeliers and other times they look like an oozing net. They are pretty and grotesque at the same time. Is that what California is like to anyone? I keep hearing stories of how wonderful the west coast is, but the people are as fake as their silicon breasts. There is something dangerous about the towering, spidery palm trees in the scribbly, colorful, (wishy?)washy landscapes.
Overall, the show was cohesive even if dichotomic. The immediacy of Stephanie Wagner’s surface play complimented Nina Rizzo’s depth play very well. In the smaller room the works started to relate a little better. Ms. Rizzo’s paintings show hints of pool and bridge structures while Ms. Wagner has dazzling sunsets and tourist snapshots, both evoke a yearning for or a contemplation about vacations. Maybe I’m the one thinking about laying out in a lawnchair in the backyard with the kids running through a sprinkler. Say what? Four months ’til summer! I can still dream can’t I?
As much as I enjoyed this show, I am still conflicted as to its rating. That Nina Rizzo really made my eyes hurt looking at those paintings and now my head hurts thinking about them! Do I enjoy this show because I intensely and critically viewed the work? Or do I enjoy it because I made a connection to Ms. Wagner’s work and I respect what Ms. Rizzo accomplished with the paint? I am unwilling to revisit the space. I’ve been out twice now and as I recall Ms. Wagner’s work stood out on opening night. Ms. Rizzo’s work is good, no doubt, but they definitely require time to get acquainted with. Hmmm. Alright, alright, I… will go… with… GREAT.
Its like that and like this and like that, So jus’ chill, ’til the next episode. I’ll tell you ’bout what I sees.
