On the Other Side, a show of large-scale
painting and wall-mounted sculpture now on display at the Cleveland
State University Art Gallery, is a time-traveling exhibit of works, a
few of which feel like they dug in their heels back during some
fraught, neo-expressionist moment in the 1980s.
That in itself isn’t a bad thing; much of the most ambitious
expressive work of the century flourished (however improbably) during
the Reagan administration. And it’s undeniably the business of this
kind of art to find the power and passion immanent in materials. The
only relevant questions for artist and viewer alike are always the
same: Is it working? Are we feeling yet? But if the words “What year is
this?” are hard to repress, there may be a problem. Feeling is so much
a matter of the present tense.
On the Other Side curator Andrzej Siwkiewicz is a Polish-born
painter who relocated to New York in the late 1980s, moving to
Cleveland in 1996. At the CSU Gallery, he adds four large-scale oil
paintings of his own to the mix — boldly rendered images of nude
female models striking self-absorbed poses, as in “R & R,” which
shows two figures essentially back-to-back. In the foreground, one
crouches in shadow, facing us and gazing down at her hands planted on
the floor; the other is modeled in strokes of light pink and white and
is shown from the back, with one hand raised to the nape of her neck. A
vibrant red and pink background offers no information about the figures
but serves to frame a muscular evocation of frustration and
distraction.
The show’s tendency toward the dramatic is even more pronounced in
Yong Han’s two nearly 10-foot works, “Lion King” and “Bondage.” The
Korean-born artist has become one of Cleveland’s most recognizable
painters in the past two decades, combining loose abstraction with a
kind of celebratory geometry in huge oil-on-canvas works. In the past
he has used a Christmas tree-like triangle as organizational/symbolic
motif, and here, starbursts of radiating yellow and white lines serve a
similar function. The overall effect is a taut sense of possibility, as
Yong’s layered imagery draws the viewer toward a mysterious vision of
house-like shapes, glimpsed through the bars of a cage of energy.
Kam Shun Lee moved to the U.S. from China with his family as a
teenager. Like Yong Han, he has become a notable presence in Cleveland
painting, especially during the 1990s. His athletic depictions at the
CSU gallery of dense vegetation, rocks and other landscape elements
read as much like acts of pure painting as depiction, reveling in
substance and the formal rhythms of mark-making.
Most contemporary — because he’s the least time-bound of the
artists in On the Other Side — is American sculptor Tracy
Heneberger. Over the past decade, Heneberger has traveled back and
forth many times to produce works at a foundry in Beijing, where his
experiences have inspired his wall-hanging bronze and aluminum objects,
cast from actual fish, mushrooms and medicinal roots. Metaphorical
works like the fan-like “Chorus” and the uneven, frayed-looking
“Tapestry” — both assembled from a number of bronze fish —
stir different sensory experiences and associations together, ambushing
expectation. Heneberger’s powerfully contemplative combinations speak
of transformation and the great cycle of ages that spins out all forms,
so briefly cast in time.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.