One of the most successful shows at the Image Gallery this year features the work of James Balyeat. In this series of small paintings (polymer on canvas) Balyeat combines technical facility with a sagacious choice and treatment of subject matter. His rambunctious nudes are depicted cavorting, gamboling, mincing, or simply languishing in various attitudes of repose. Emerging out of the background with these simplified figures are a number of abstract forms and, in at least two instances, sexual organs like blown-up illustrative insets in a photograph. The fluid feel of these lively figures as well as the juxtaposition of the rather flat two-dimensional forms is suggestive of Matisse. But the likeness ends there; for Balyeat creates his own style to suit his peculiar sensibility. He paints with an exuberance and extravagance that is brought into balance by his startling choice of color and the thick glossy surface texture he achieves. His real forte, however, comes largely in his treatment: the erotic posturing of his nude figures is carried off primarily through his capricious sense of humor.
The work of Jon Colburn, at the same Portland gallery, presents two sides of this painter––neither wholly satisfying. On the one hand, he is concerned (if not preoccupied) with the complexity of the contemporary world; on the other, he goes back in time to Vermeer, repainting a Vermeer portrait then contrasting it with an area of canvas that is broken into a series of multicolor (pastel) stripes: his intention here is so obvious it is almost banal. In both instances, one is aware of a bothersome borrowing or carry-over from the Pop school. The paintings of strictly contemporary subject matter––built around a mechanical symbolism emphasizing flags, semaphores, warning grids, and various other signaling apparatus––are never quite resolved; certain sections seem to be trying to break through with a statement, but as a whole these paintings do not work. The “Vermeers,” though trite, come off far better.
The exhibition reveals Colburn to be an accomplished young painter who could command some attention were he to break into his own scene.
9 Pacific Northwest Artists/3 Dimensions/1966, shows Rex Amos, Lawrence Beck, Jan Evans, Lee Kelly, Donald Peel, Joseph Petta, Ronald Orrin Peterson, Ken Shores, Bruce West. One’s immediate reaction to this group show at the Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, is that it is badly balanced and poorly installed. Too much is attempted with too little—both in terms of space and talent.
Jan Evans (to whom the above definitely does not apply) easily outclasses anyone in the show. Her pieces, composed of stretched raw canvas squares and flat aluminum strips, generate a stark power out of their sheer simplicity of form. The materials create an initial ambiguity which adumbrates their eventual function: the unpainted canvas square possesses a blank anonymity; the contrasting aluminum strip has the potentiality both of being candescent and casting decisive shadow patterns. In all but one case, the aluminum strips extend beyond the limits of the canvas-covered square and establish a linear ambiguity by bringing the space around the canvas into a direct relationship with it. Jan Evans’ pieces are not merely objects to perceive and to react to; they demand that in the experience of viewing them one must he aware of how they transform the surrounding space into a participating part of the sculptural event. Out of their austerity, heightened through the effects of shadow and interval, Evans’ works build to a lyrical intensity that is meaningful not only in the individual pieces but throughout the entire area her exhibit occupies.
Another artist attempting to create an overall effect with his installation is Peterson. His works are stretched canvas on boxlike frames, sprayed with fluorescent acrylic paint, then striped with black cloth tape. They are arranged from the smallest (six inches square) to the largest (six feet square by eleven and a half inches) on the four walls of a room, with a constant black line running through the center of each one and almost seeming to be connected. The immediate effect of walking into this room is arresting: an explosion of color, an indelible black line. One has the sense of being in a room full of color and experiencing a gradual diminution of a single repeated form. There the effectiveness ends. Individually, Peterson’s canvas-covered boxes have nothing to say: twenty-five times. Granted, Peterson’s room becomes a stage. But theater is never simply surface experience––if it is to be lasting.
Peel, an exciting wood sculptor whose pieces are randomly placed in the thoroughfare (for want of ample space), does his most significant work while exploring, then transcending his material by making it function––in somewhat the same manner as Evans does––outside itself. An example is Green, which is crafted and painted to create an illusion between space and plane and overall form and to exploit as well the meaning and meaningfulness of the laminated cedar slabs from which it was sculpted: while it is stationary as an object, it appears to shift as one confronts it, just as the sections of a kaleidoscope change and form new relationships after any slight movement of the material governing its illusion. In Double Image, a highly polished burl mounted on a circular piece of marble, Peel again achieves a kind of mobility in the illusion created through the interchange of reflected wood on stone and stone on wood.
Lee Kelly’s close room of massive sculpture leaves one on the border of claustrophobia. His private vision seems akin to Kafka’s, and the result in his art is frighteningly macabre—though nonetheless real. The best of these works is Blue Sculpture, a moody, brooding, welded steel piece which epitomizes Kelly’s entire effort: he is depicting the dilemma of being trapped between the earthy and the ethereal, the real and the ideal. Blue rises out of its base on two very small legs; the body is bloated, misshapen, ungainly, patched; at the top, in place of a head, is a set of too-small wings which have the hopeless task of getting the whole thing airborne. Kelly has created a metaphor that demands of its viewer a look at a devastating truth.
One young sculptor with definite talent but apparently no real direction yet is Lawrence Beck. His I-Beam Endo—wood and metal kinetic construction—reminds one strongly of di Suvero; however, it establishes its own esthetic and works: it is a paradox of raw, brash elements caught at a delicate balance. The evidence of his work in this show is a good indication that Beck is an artist to watch in the next few years.
––Douglas Kent Hall
