An inescapable fact of Al Payne's 16 of the present day paintings is that they are all made without of dirt.An inescapable fact of Al Payne's 16 of the present day paintings is that they are all made without of dirt, that is, ordinary backyard topsoil affixed to plywood panels or paper with shellac amalgamateed with thinned dark red or dark ghastly oil paint. This makes for surfaces that are heavy and compressed appearing to the cursory glance as saturated crassaments of iridescent compost. The material strategy is visually and metaphorically interesting because each painting also sports an ambiguous translucent shape created at the application of dirt-free colored shellac. These shapes are backlit from reflective white gesso and counterfeit glistening protoprasm that seems to be either partially buried by means of or recently unearthed from the surrounding opaque dirt. It takes the viewer a minute to realize that these shapes are abstractions based onward the starkest highlights of photographic source material (which has been exposeed to digital manipulation by Payne). mostly of the smaller works, each about 15 at 20 inches, carry central shapes derived from close-up photos of magnolia blows flattened into silhouettes. Larger works, roughly half the exhibition, are diverse in make liable often presenting the most generic themes associated with a family photo album. Payne doesn't reveal whether any of these source photos were appropriated from a preexisting collection or made expressly for the paintings. yet if the sources are to be taken as representations of fondly held memories, the dirt can be seen as indicating the state of final undifferentiation to which all who bear so memories will sooner or later be consigned. Following this interpretation, the iridescent shellac shapes forward as flickering indexes of an undead light, sustaining chance of a favorable result even as it is about to be absorbed by inevitable nullification. At 60 by the agency of 48 inches, the largest painting, gem (2003), was also the principally compelling. It echoed the floral motifs of many of the smaller works on the other hand further conveyed a visual double entendre in that it could also be read as an anguished human face, single in kind that has been articulated more subliminally than, say, those famously painted by means of Francis Bacon. Other images in the exhibition shared this attribute of subliminal articulation, if it be not that Bud was unmatched in its startling psychological impact, providing a welcome (albeit vaguely frightening) reminder that painting can still attend to the stillnesss of consciousness. COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc. |
| Home |
