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Corey Postglione: Synecdoche
Thomas Masters Gallery
Chicago
November 20 – December 20, 2009

With his current exhibition at the Thomas Masters Gallery, Corey Postglione has one of the more intriguing shows one has seen for a while. Here, he presents the viewer a developed, dynamic style, telling a story written with oils and abstractions. Here, the artist strings together his forms as some string together sentences. Here, Postiglione’s calls not so much to change the world, but to alert and call upon the viewer to reflect on the crisis of population growth. This he does in a vigorous, creative, and brilliant fashion. It rings with the evening news.

Through this artistic reach, Postglione’s focuses on over-crowding, food shortages and calamities. ‘Synecdoche’, the artist shares, “suggests a part of a whole.” The images focus upon perceptions of varying forms of nature and their interconnectivity. “I use abstractions to signify a metaphoric content,” says Postiglione, “I begin painting, I go for it, I ponder it later.”

“Swarm II”, mixed media on canvas, a composition of grays and black with some naked canvas. With an appearance of charcoal, it is acrylic, ground and scraped to a dull roar. “It is part of the matrix. It’s represents the down side of where we’re headed,” He shares. He began this series in 1998.

Postglione has written, “I have been developing a series of works on paper that use the image of a labyrinth or maze. The labyrinth…an ancient symbol, suggests a refuge or rite of passage going back in time to the mystery cults of Dionysus. The labyrinth can also function as a metaphor for a life-map. It is this sense of the labyrinth, as a way of mapping ones movement through life. That imbues the content of my work.”

There’s something otherworldly in the euphemistic language asserting itself in his paintings. “Exponential XIV”, acrylic on canvas, is a series of connected spheres. It’s reminiscent of a molecular chain, with its off-white with feint yellows and greens and blues. The artist wanted this piece, “…to be upbeat. I wanted a lighter version to show there’s hope”, he smiles.

The unusualness of these pieces is meant to disrupt. “It’s about systems. It’s about growth, population growth”, he says. “It’s the one thing that keeps on growing, and as a result, we’re eating each other.”

“Tango Duet”, acrylic and oil on canvas, expresses the paradox, the entanglement, the inter-connectedness the artist addresses stylistically. Yet sometimes, the works “fight back”. “You think it’ll work, and it doesn’t. Indeed, sometimes the media fights back.

Influenced by Robert Mangold, Peter Haley, and Robert Ryman’s monochrome painting and minimalism, Postglione finds himself teaching art at Columbia College, Chicago. And although the viewer may hope many of Postglione’s pictures of disaster fail to materialize, we should hope all the more that more of his work will appear before long.

www.thomasmastersgallery.com