MINNEAPOLIS OBSERVER:
January 2006
by Sharon Parker
Art Matters: Orbital Me at Rosalux
Gallery
Jennifer
Davis and Daniel Buettner paint moderately surreal
stories from their adolescence in a new exhibition
called Orbital Me: Hello From My Place in the Universe
(or, Welcome to my Universe) at Rosalux Gallery,
in the Open Book Center. The show’s opening
is this Saturday, January 7, 7-11 p.m., but the
works went on display Wednesday.
On
a recent afternoon I was the only visitor in the
gallery, and it was pleasant to ponder these pictures
and the stories behind them in such a serene setting.
|
I
Come in Peace...CRUNCH by Daniel Buettner |
Davis
and Buettner make a nice pairing—they both employ
weathered textures, offer a touch of surrealism in
their imagery and in the placement of elements in
their pictures, their color palettes are never jarring,
and they both bring a storyteller’s sensibility
to their work.
But they are also distinct—you will readily
recognize each of their work when you next see it
somewhere. And likely you will; these artists are
building well-deserved reputations around town.
Davis offers mostly small (about a square foot) mixed-media
pictures that often feature slender girls and spindly,
leafless trees, along with other elements. Despite
their small size, these pictures have an open, airy
quality to them. Her palette tends toward pastels
and neutrals, making the occasional splash of bold
color a delightful surprise.
But I hate it when the little sign next to a painting
says “mixed media.” I want to know what
the artist used. I don’t know whether this is
the artist’s choice or the gallery’s,
but if they’re just trying to make the viewer
examine the painting to figure it out (not a bad idea),
then how about offering a lift-the-flap or other way
of letting us know if we guessed right?
Davis’s Web site does tell more about the media
she uses and more about herself and her art, of course
www.jenniferdavisart.com.
It is mostly a combination of acrylic paint, some
kind of pencil or crayon, and pictures cut and pasted
collage-style into the mix. Yet she doesn’t
overdo the collage elements; instead, they lend a
pleasant quirkiness to her works. Most of these pictures
appear to be painted on wood panels and scratched
to create a weathered texture with a woven pattern.
One of her paintings, “Wild Horses,” features
cave-painting-like drawings of horses, very small,
on a billowing pink skirt of a girl or woman, surrounded
by a neutral background, who is walking away from
us while the horses appear to be stampeding toward
us.
In “Shelter,” a large tomato-red slightly
irregular orb hangs behind spindly trees that are
just beginning to leaf out, the golden yellow earth
surrounds an aqua mound from which the trees sprout—perhaps
this mound is the shelter?
Buettner is not so coy—all of his little labels
tell us that these works are acrylic on canvas. And
the stories behind the paintings are displayed in
one-page panels hanging right next to them. Except
the stories are incomplete, disjointed, like snatches
of adolescent memories, and the paintings’ representation
of the story tend to be rather cryptic and often metaphorical.
The viewer is left to infer the relationship between
the painting and the story fragment.
“I Love You. Now Eat” features a blue-gray
hand offering an anemic straw-colored stalk of broccoli
to a chimpanzee head. The mottled texture of the mostly
grey background is boldly interrupted by the bright
red sleeve of this commanding hand. The story that
accompanies it tells of a nerdy, unathletic boy having
to meet his classmates on the football team for a
study session at the locker room. He feels like a
chimpanzee among gorillas, and his mother clearly
doesn’t understand.
Buettner’s canvasses are about twice the size
of Davis’s, so we go past three Davises to find
the next Buettner panel, which picks up on the previous
story, but doesn’t resolve it. This painting,
“I Wanted To Play Quarterback, or Any Position
on the Field,” depicts a football huddle of
small boys, a jockey, a running camel, a stone arch
such as found on an old sports arena, all surrounded
with the textural, weathered, grey background that
seems to be a Buettner trademark. Exposed pencil marks
add more layers of texture and definition to the paintings.
Buettner is not new to telling stories with his art;
a year ago he had an exhibition here of paintings
he created along with a children’s story about
his two cats—but with none of the saccharine
quality that you might expect from such a story. There
is some talk of reprising the show. For more about
Buettner and his work, see his Web site, www.danielbuettner.com |
|
