Michele Mikesell: Bread & Circus

Chiaroscuro

702 ½ & 708 Canyon Road, Santa Fe

THE FLOWER THAT FESTOONS the bier of Michele Mikesell’s newest body of work can be found in Juvenal’s Satire 10, where the poet suggests that “panem et circenses” are the only remaining cares of a Roman populace that has given up its birthright of political freedom. Mikesell herself explains, “In these ten paintings I have  returned to my favorite subject—the circus. The title for the body of work, Bread & Circus, is taken from a quote by the Roman writer Juvenal ‘in reference to the government staging elaborate spectacles and passing out food to pacify the public.’” Indeed, her earnest and dutiful exploration of circus life delivers a rather inchoate connection to Juvenal’s maxim by focusing instead on a period of circus performance much removed from the context and meaning of Juvenal’s famous line. In this regard, it is difficult for the title of the exhibition to be accessed in the work. The claim that Harlequins and weepy Saltimbanques somehow function “under the banner of government dissent” might lead one to the conclusion that the real subject on display here is neither Circus Maximus, nor Barnum & Bailey, but the ineffectiveness of political discourse in art.

The Ringmaster, 2011, Oil on mounted canvas, 48 X 36 inches

To be sure, the circus is a subject that for many artists has been filled with metaphoric possibility, formal experimentation, and exotic allure. Much more than popular entertainment, the circus is a dazzling alternative to everyday life—a spectacle of man’s tragic failings, as seen in the buffoonish performances of the clowns, and a vision of his rich potential, symbolized by the daring and skill of the aerialists. But it is also hell. In order to paint it one would need to get beyond the postmodernist turn of mind—recycling the already recycled—to something more like magical invocation; a raising of the worst public horrors of Arcadia, a palimpsest on which gangsters and politicians, clowns and whores, the doomed, the uprooted, the crushed, and the demented, have all left their traces. The burning phantasmagorias of Breughel are closer in texture and weight to Juvenal’s cruel syntax. But this is America, home of Burning Man, where the bourgeois folklore of the circus turns primitive intensity into Warholwellian atavism, where Aeschylean Furies are funneled through vivacious herbivores, grazing on the sugar and carbohydrate of escape—escape from the world and history.

Fresh Start, 2011, Oil on mounted canvas, 40 X 30 inches

In trying to understand how people face historical events, one must admit that not everyone historicizes reality, that an awareness of a distance between oneself in the past and oneself in the present is not a given. In fact, reflection on the past, on time, and on the relation of our individual and collective selves to evolving history is rare. Most of mankind lives in a manufactured present. Indeed, the rejection or neglect of history is the only way in which the majority of mankind can cope with the cascade of horrors that assail us every day of our lives. It is here that the meaning of Juvenal’s accusation becomes clear, because it is clear that Juvenal is denouncing the people, who live in an endless present of bread and circuses, oblivious to the consequences. In this regard, Mikesell’s varied iconographies and purposes of circus imagery from the American twentieth century can be explored as modern figures moving along well-plotted courses (the circle of the circus ring) in a state of sheer stupidity, and in the case of The Ringmaster, prevarication and malice.

In Mikesell’s portraiture, the surface detail is dead-on: the figures, the flesh, their faces, their costumes; everything that is literal. However, her figures signify an existence without signification—or, rather, signification (as far as Juvenal’s quote is concerned) is not part of the consciousness of its participants. We have The Ringmaster, as dark and pitiless as a rotting pier. We have The Trapeze Artist, droll chanteuse swathed in a whirligig of mysterious lace and raven’s wings—untouchable, vaguely satanic, and bored. We have The Cannon Girl, a steampunk doll full of thrust and torque. Credit has to be given to Mikesell’s technical ability, her genius for the near impossible joining of expressionist archaism, sensual portraiture, and Surrealist kitsch. One almost expects something substantial to emerge from the immediacy and lushness of these candied and atmospheric pieces. But the oratorical storm that emerged from Juvenal’s Satires in the second century, when carnivorous Furies were capable of grand lamentation, has convulsed into a decrepit weather report in our age. Instead of Furies we have The Chandelier, a symbolist in rabbit ears, glaring banefully out at the vast terrain of appropriated motifs. At its best, Mikesell’s lyrical but hermetic work creates surface expectations that are never realized. One wishes that the gorgeous mastery of affectless chic and cosmetic anxiety encountered in Fresh Start, a tremulous and damp Saltimbanque in smeared makeup, would prompt a sense of complexity, or depth, or psychic intensity, rather than the image of a lost and lovely puppet. But it doesn’t.

- Anthony Hassett

Bread & Circus

December 9, 2011 – January 7, 2012

Santa Fe – Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Michele Mikesell’s Bread & Circus, an exhibition of ten new paintings running December 9 through January 7.  There will be no opening reception.

Mikesell’s newest characters range from Little Tack Spitter (old circus vernacular for ‘one who posts bills’) to the impressive and ethereal The Ring Master. Mikesell explains, “In these ten paintings I have returned to my favorite subject – the circus. The title for the body of work, ‘Bread & Circus’, is taken from a quote by the Roman writer Juvenal in reference to the government staging elaborate spectacles and passing out food to pacify the public: ‘Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.’ “

Her new technique incorporates brushing, wiping, scraping and sanding paint, resulting in a beautifully textured surface which adds depth and personality to her characters.  This surface is a marked departure from her high gloss paintings of recent years and ties in nicely with her thematic constructs. Mikesell explains, “Irony, contradiction, humor and tragedy are recurring themes in my work and are illustrated not only within the image, but in the actual paint and surface of the painting.  These new paintings illustrate a profound departure from the animal iconography I have used in the past, but I continue to feel I am speaking to the individual viewer about universal human experience.”

Michele Mikesell

Bread & Circus

December 9, 2011 – January 7, 2012

**In calendar listings please list exhibition as “no opening reception.”**

Location: Chiaroscuro, 702 ½ & 708 Canyon Road on

Gypsy Alley, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-992-0711

Two artists obsessed with color – but in differing ways – open in a two-man show at Chiaroscuro’s Canyon Road location today.

The bodies of work of Mike Stack and Tim Jag both fall into the geometric abstraction genre, at least according to gallery director John Addison, and use uniform straight lines and slight variations in color to achieve radically different results. However, Stack’s approach is more emotional, and Jag’s more cerebral.

Mike Stack

Stack is a recent addition to Chiaroscuro’s stable of artists. Based in Tucson, Stack has been painting for more than 20 years. He exhibits in Arizona, Philadelphia and New York, and has been a professor of art at Pima Community College in Tucson since 2002. This is his first show in Santa Fe.

“Stack’s paintings are built upon a rigid structure of equidistant horizontal lines painted in slightly varying hues of color,” Addison said. “The palette is carefully considered, providing an endless variation on hue.”

“I would say it’s more abstraction than geometric,” Stack said in a telephone interview. “It’s definitely not biomorphic or anything, so I guess you could call it geometric abstraction. For me, I guess, I am a colorist. Variation in color is almost like an entity to me.

“I spent many years painting from life and wound up having more of an interest in color on its own, and variation on its own,” the artist said. “Eventually I just kind of peeled away everything but the color itself.

“Although the paintings are abstract, there’s very much a relationship to nature,” Stack added. “I like the way these minute variations crackle and how they buzz and how they sit there and shimmer.”

That shimmer of subtle color variations “pretty much confirms what I’m trying to do,” he said. He paints in oil. “It’s a pretty slow-going process,” Stack confirmed. “It’s really hard to paint these paintings, because the values are so close.”

Stack has lived in Tucson 17 years. “It’s the light,” he said. “It’s just fantastic. And back of my house there’s a canyon – the way the light gets trapped here day to day, that’s definitely what draws me.”

He sent six paintings and some drawings to the gallery, “but I’m not sure how many John (Addison) is hanging,” he said. “I think maybe four paintings.”

His work has gotten larger and larger, he said. A couple of the paintings in this show are 76-by-72 inches.

“I was working in the 32-by-32 inch range for a long time, then a friend said, ‘You really have to fall into these paintings,’ so I increased the size, and it actually worked out really well,” he said. “I’m just trying to see what happens next. Every day they just evoke something new. Something about these paintings – they change all the time, under lighting, through time. A lot has to do with the optical mixing that I put forth. I don’t think it fatigues the eye, but they definitely change every time you look at them,” Stack said.

Tim Jag

Jag’s intellectual, linear color experimentations all seem to end in a vector somewhere on the plane, indicative of his fascination with astronomy, “Star Trek” and other visions from the sky. He calls his latest series “Colornovas,” reflective of a star being born or dying.

As with Stack’s, the work relies on thin strips of carefully considered colors, but Jag’s lines join together at a definitive point, forming the nucleus of an ever-expanding color nova. Both large and small scale pieces will be on view. Jag elaborated in a written statement, “The paintings are my way of abstractly using color and symmetry to symbolize celestial movement and experience. Formally, these paintings strive for balance between flat space versus depth, and color sensations that come out of color juxtapositions.”

Jag has exhibited widely across the Southwest. He currently lives in California, after having lived in Santa Fe for a while.

“For me, the act of painting is a process of how the grid (industrial culture) defines itself from the natural world: an inclusive act that brings in cultural media and ephemera from that culture,” the artist has written. “Having an affinity for industrial design and pop culture, I find visual resources as random as the hardware store, the toy store, the produce department at a supermarket, dated textiles and papers, beat-up billboards, highway signs and symbols or the design of a magazine ad. With this in mind, I want my paintings to reflect the way culture organizes and builds upon itself – specifically, the way architecture and infrastructural design separates us from the organic world. As such, symmetrical organizing has become a central issue in the painting process.

Jag has moved from the pop side to a more abstract understanding of his concepts, though.

“This new painting series I am calling ‘Colornovas’ because they are a way for me to visualize an interest in the phenomena of stars within our solar system,” he wrote in an artist’s statement. “The paintings are my way of abstractly using color and symmetry to symbolize celestial movement and experience. At its core these paintings use a single point that all things lead to or fly away from. This interest in stars is multifaceted in its concepts and springs from numerous sources.

“My interest was first sparked by the iconic and symbolic use of sun imagery within culture (like the Japanese flag or 13th-century religious paintings showing rays of light symbolizing spiritual illumination or sun and star symbols in drawings of ancient cultures),” he wrote. “Contemporary sources include the classic scene in the TV series ‘Star Trek’ – when the starship Enterprise takes off and you see the phenomena of streaking stars or the stage-crafted pyrotechnics of light blasting across or behind at a modern rock concert. And there are milder images from nature that show the same patterns in things such as flowers and spider webs. The end result is a reading or redefining of a cultural archetype (star pattern and image).

“Technically, my process includes the use of aggressive mark-making and scratching with inks and sharp tools, re-staining and sanding, symmetrical drawing, and painterly characteristics such as color contrast, plasticity, and multiple layering of colors,” Jag said. “Formally, these paintings strive for balance between flat space versus depth, and color sensations that come out of color juxtapositions.

“Color is a jumping-off point for the paintings where I can keep visual movement going through symmetry and use color as a signifier for a variety of ideas (symbolic and metaphorical),” he added.” I am working on a painting called ‘Red Atomic’ that uses movement and color (red) to capture the burst of an atomic blast or the hot cinnamon flavor of the hard candy called Red’s Atomic Balls. Within the paintings, color is a central issue – how colors work together formally and how I personally distill external color sources into painting content.”

John Geldersma: Black Wings

Chiaroscuro

708 Canyon Road, Santa Fe

John Geldersma, Y Wings, 2011, painted Ponderosa pine, 19 x 47 x 4 inches

JOHN GELDERSMA’S SCULPTURES at Chiaroscuro Gallery are imbued with both the bayou exuberance of his Louisiana background and the minimalist rigor of his East Coast training and early milieu. His work shows a loving give and take with his materials. The dialogue includes scraping, sanding, drilling, burning, painting, and varnishing, but also seems to embody a kind of deep listening to the wood itself. Several pieces in the show are called “cairns,” stacked piles of wood blocks, some on wood bases, others on steel plate bases.

Traditionally, a cairn is a pile of stones stacked as a kind of barrier, signal, or boundary to indicate that a place is considered sacred, or is significant in some way. Built since prehistoric times throughout the world, they were frequently associated with the human figure in cultures as diverse as Inuit and Alpine. Cairns are still in use today, for example to mark trails in U.S. national parks, and in some Buddhist cultures they symbolize the Buddha. I particularly liked the group of three called Hanging Cairn A, B, and C. Suspended from a stout rope attached to a viga, each is composed of blocks of pine wood resembling children’s blocks, but of different sizes and assembled so that they rotate independently, giving each piece a multitude of faces and orientations that can be manipulated by the viewer. This is touchable art and has much to do with the loving touch of its maker. In Square Cairn A and Square Cairn B, although their components do not rotate, this dynamic quality is also at work, arising from varied shapes and sizes, as well as complex, subtle colors in interplay with the innate qualities of the wood.

The verticality of these pieces is in continuity with the poles Geldersma had been making for some time. A number of such poles are included in this exhibit. Asymmetrical, made from found trees or branches, Geldersma’s poles are like totems that a very precocious child might come up with. More than six feet high, painted and incised, some of these arched spires can be rotated on their axes; doing so feels a bit like dancing with a tree. The wing motif, from which the exhibit derives its name, marks a shift in Geldersma’s work during the past five years toward horizontal works.

In several pieces of the Black Wings series, a technique of subtraction of wood from the outer edges creates a wave-like form suggesting movement and tension at the center. Geldersma’s working method seems a very modern version of that archetypal trope of artistic practice we might associate with, say, Michelangelo hewing away the extraneous marble to free the perfect human figure waiting inside. Black Wings #5 consists of three deconstructed aspen logs mounted horizontally one above the other on a wall. Portions of each log are sliced neatly away, as timber might be cut for particular construction purposes. It is just sliced wood with a varnish or burnish on one face and no imaginable function. Yet the viewer is launched into a poetic realm by the very purposelessness of the thing itself. This is the territory of Wallace Stevens’ 1915 poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” or literary critic William Empson’s 1930 book Seven Types of Ambiguity. In other words, a state of perception is induced that’s both rigorously minimal and highly charged with associative meanings supplied by the viewer in collaboration with the object.

The three horizontal burned and painted aspen components of Resting Spirits, from 2006, have knobby, tool-like, and rocket-cone-shaped finial ends that again momentarily raise the issue of function only to transcend it, the way African fetish objects do by their mysterious, even magisterial presence. There is a gravitas to all of Geldersma’s work that has much to do with the artist’s deep engagement with wood’s essential qualities. Even when burned, varnished or painted, the warps and textures of the wood speak clearly of their origin as a cherry, pine, aspen, or maple tree.

Growing up in Louisiana, Geldersma was influenced by indigenous and imported Caribbean cultural elements, such as local traditions of Voudou, Roman Catholicism, and that carnivalesque expression of mixed heritage, ritual, decoration, and display known as the Mardi Gras festival. He now lives and works in New Mexico, and the elemental aspect of all his work fits with and reflects the southwest aesthetic. A series of Crossroads pieces evokes both the landscape and the Christian cross while acknowledging the underlying older quadrant symbolism of indigenous cultures where the vertical and horizontal axes cross at midpoint, with neither the sky nor the earth, neither the physical nor the spiritual, being privileged. Rather, the two are engaged in vibrant equilibrium.

—Marina La Palma

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November Feature

November 4 – December 3, 2011

The month of November brings Chiaroscuro the opportunity to feature two emerging abstract painters, Mike Stack and Tim Jag. Both artists’ body of work fall into the geometric abstraction genre and use uniform straight lines and slight variations in color to achieve radically different results.

Mike Stack is a recent addition to Chiaroscuro’s represented artists. Based in Tucson AZ, Stack has been painting for over 20 years, exhibits widely in Arizona, and has been a professor of art at Pima Community College in Tucson since 2002.

Stack’s paintings are built upon a rigid structure of equidistant horizontal lines painted in slightly varying hues of color. The palette is carefully considered, providing an endless variation on hue.

Stack explains, “Variation for me is not a thematic device but an inner construct by which I can abstractly register the vivid natural spectacles of the surrounding Southwest without quoting verbatim the desert floor, a rock face, or a particular sky.”

Tim Jag’s featured paintings are recent works from his Colornova series. Like Stack, the work relies on thin strips of carefully considered colors, but Jag’s lines join together at a definitive point, forming the nucleus of an ever expanding color nova. Both large and small scale pieces will be on view. Jag elaborates, “The paintings are my way of abstractly using color and symmetry to symbolize celestial movement and experience…Formally, these paintings strive for balance between flat space versus depth, and color sensations that come out of color juxtapositions.”

Jag has exhibited widely across the Southwest and currently resides in California.

Friday, August 19, 10am – 7pm

Saturday, August 20, 10am -5pm

Sunday, August 21, 10am – 5pm

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