Art Review: West Loop Trilogy — Part 3 (Black Walnut Gallery) by Jeffery McNary
West Loop Trilogy – Part 3
Entare l ‘Inverno
Black Walnut Gallery
Chicago
December 1- 31, 2009
The tone of the current exhibition at the Black Walnut Gallery is in tune with the themes curator, gallery owner Robert Waynor, generally purports. Aesthetically there is a measured distance between the various works. They do not leave possessions in seats beside them, and each artist succeeds in rolling out a clear coda of their own style and approach.
The show, “Entare l ‘Inverno”, brings together a group of Midwestern artists, including Michael Coakes and Janet Krehbiel Pieracci, emerging with dramatic stories.
The themes in Krehbiel Pieracci’s works reflect her interests in layers of paint, of transparency and opacity. These layers, she holds, “Sometimes hold layers of meanings, change in scale. I am always looking to recognize the serendipitous accident and leave it, present.”
The sensation of her sometimes thick application of oil offers a tingling mixture of texture and form. “Pietra VI”, oil on canvas, is part of a series of paintings titled “Carrara White”, a title pulled from architectural nomenclature used to specify the white marble of Carrara for an architectural project (as opposed to Calacatta Grey or Crema Valencia). The first source of the painting is the marble quarries themselves, the quarries from which much of Michelangelo’s stone was obtained.
“I have spent considerable time there, and “Pietra VI”, particularly, draws from the appearance of the marble at day’s end, when the huge white cuts can take on the pinks and oranges of sunset”, she shares. “I’m drawn both by the appearance of the stone and the long connection to art and architectural history. I identify with Michelangelo’s love of marble and can easily imagine his supposed torn feelings between wanting to order his piece and take it home to sculpture and just wanting to stay and work the quarry.”
The works of Michael Coakes take on a sensation with a somewhat hallucinatory intensity. “In general, the theme that seems to be the common thread in my art is beauty. Most often it’s specifically female beauty,” the artist comments. “I’ve been accused often of worshipping women in my work by taking an angle of view looking up toward the subjects in my work. That angle of view, when it is apparent in the work, has never been a conscious decision and whether or not it represents my attitude toward women, I can’t say.”
His series, “The Illusion of Psyche”, proves a well developed conceptual idea. It’s classical Greek, nuanced but not overly sensual. Coakes develops the works thematically, then develops them into beautiful pieces of art.
“I thought of people’s attraction to the symmetrically shaped ink blots we commonly attribute to Dr. Rorschach and the almost reflex-like interest in finding what we “see” in their shapes,” he says. “I was imagining how I might light a model photographically to make the images of blot and woman fuse together fluidly. I tested my idea with a friend during a shoot and got the look I was after. From that point on the female form in the work was Psyche and the series, “The Illusions of Psyche”.
In, “Pietra VII”, oil on canvas, Krehbielp Pieracci shares, “I think the Courbet side is winning but perhaps not. That’s really not for me to say and although I think it is important for me to know what my sources are, ultimately the paintings need to stand.”
Both artist, as do many, tussle with these works. “There have been times when I thought the flow from the ink forms to the figure would be more fluid and satisfying only to find that another figurative pose will better complete the piece” says Coakes, adding “I’m careful to maintain the sinuosity of the form without crossing or even nearing the line of sexual explicitly. Beauty needs to be preserved.”
“I wrestle with stretching and preparing large canvas, and I like that battle. Pietra VI is one of those. I finished it before completing Pietra III. ”, comments Krehbielp Pieracci. “The Carrara series has developed over 10 years, I started with a lot of work on paper and it took about 3 years before I began to paint on canvas. When I get stuck in the middle of a piece I go back to my sources and my sketchbooks and sometimes I stop and do smaller studies in oil. Sometimes that leads to an entirely new painting before the stuck one gets finished.”
The exhibition begs the right to roam, then returns with nourishing images and stories.