Toxic Color @ exit (a gallery space)

Often Mother Nature lends her poisonous creations a certain sexiness. If eaten,

those

brightly-tinted Disney-looking toadstools will cause illness or death. In fact,

the mere lure

of toxicity and its after-effects, the obscure pleasures of remorse and

regret for instance,

are for many of us undeniably, uncomfortably close to the

essence of desire. If you “can’t

get no satisfaction” you can at least get thoroughly

nauseated.

In art, an emphasis on distortion and artificially are often associated with the

superannuation or decay of a strong aesthetic movement. “Mannerism” in one form

another has dogged the steps of classical movements, and in the wake of high

modernism’

s heroic stance much of postmodernism’s almost obsessively disoriented

relationship to

form, content, and technical means might be put in the same class

as Parmigianino’s or El

Greco’s darkly expressive, elongated visions of the human

form.

The exhibit Toxic Color currently on view at exit gallery space juried by distinguished

painter and Kent State University Associate professor Martin Ball from a national

call for

entries, is a show that explores several aspects of contemporary stylistic

concerns, among

which toxicity is invoked as a rallying cry of the au courant.

Included are artists from as far

afield as New York and New Jersey, Florida and Iowa.

In his introduction to the show’s catalogue Ball writes not so much about color but

about

the range of ways in which paint can be applied in the twenty-first century,

derived often

from industrial applications, and of the new associative spectrums that

are thus brought

into play. Ball himself, for instance, uses a motorcycle detailing

tool to airbrush multi-

layered spirals onto paper and canvas. The resulting hybrid

works combine an impulse to

organic-seeming movement with a hard-edged,

mechanical technique that necessarily

alters and undermines the initial impression

of spontaneity.

Toxic Color is not mainly a show of paintings, which make up less than half of the 26

works

on display. Even those mounted on the wall typically push their mixed media

components

beyond the surface of their supports, becoming a sort of bas relief or

simply sculpture.

Several are not on the walls at all, but stuck in corners on the

floor, as if to further

emphasize the disdain and neglect suffered by inelegant or

informal, grungy-seeming

colors, materials, and techniques. Looking around the

gallery’s two rooms there is a

definite thematic unity, and not least in regard to what

many might consider to be “toxic”

colors. Acid pinks and greens and nutrition-

deprived ends of the rainbow address the

hungry eye with aggressive defiance, as

if daring you to look harder for aesthetic

coherence – for beauty, if you will, or just

for something to sink your teeth into..

It’s definitely there to be found. One northern Ohio artist included is Jenniffer Omaitz

(Free

Times 10/4/06), whose oil on panel work Phthalo Lighting is a smoothly

executed study of

one of Omaitz’ own long exposure photographs of night-time light

effects. On the left of the

painting three vertical bands of attenuated yellow or

green, and pinkish white, and a blue

like dirty toothpaste, swish across a dark

background. On the right a peaked lightening-

like upside-down “V” scratches a

vague rose-orange cloud. Hairy pink and white marks

crackle around the bands on

the left and the whole gives an almost calligraphic

impression, as if reproducing an

arcane text of the night.

Another standout is Iowa-based Josh Ryther’s Untitled, a mixed media work made

from

materials as diverse as X-ray photos and wood grain-printed contact paper, as

well as

paint. Owing much to the otherworldly imagery of classical surrealism Ryther

presents a

predominately pink interior scene punctuated by round black holes.

Orange paint spouts

from one of these, while a wooden-looking pole grows out of

another. Attached to the pole

is a thick horizontal platform, like a cut and partially

finished chunk of wood, on which rests

a carefully rendered entity that could be an

animal, or might be a gourd or ceramic vessel.

Beautifully conceived, composed

and executed, Ryther’s strange image takes its place

part-way between a surrealist

interest in the mechanics of the unconscious, and a more

contemporary, frank

engagement with the ambiguities of decorative materials and motifs.

Mark Keffer is a northern Ohio artist of long standing, represented here by an

acrylic and

latex on paper work titled Half-Thought with Reverb. Keffer’s “imaginary

landscapes,” as

he calls them in a statement included in the show’s catalogue, are

layered explorations of

pure imagery that generate dialogues between different

types of formal elements, placing

geometric and biomorphic in association against a

color field. The results here have a

logic all their own, and despite washed-out,

“poisonous” color choices, an easy-to-

appreciate beauty.

Some of the most painterly images on view in this show are in fact photographs.

Baltimore-

based Mindy Best contributes a 2 foot square metallic C-print called E127

that could easily

be an abstract alkyd work. It’s a close-up shot of diagonal

magenta stripes, augmented

here and there with splashes of sickly green. Possibly

it’s a photo of candy canes, but

Best doesn’t reveal her subject. That it evokes the

slightly sickly, sticky sweetness of

something makes it an unusually effective work.

In the show’s only figurative entry, Kentucky photographer Stephanie Grote displays

large (30”/20”) color underwater photo. It shows part of a woman’s face,

shoulders, left

arm and left shin and foot, emerging from a blob-like, blood-colored

mass of fabric,

spreading in the pale waters of a swimming pool like a stain. The red

is also reflected

above her head, cutting the woman’s features off just above eye

level like an elaborate

hat. As an innovative juxtaposition of the human figure with

abstract elements, the photo

works especially well precisely because it is a

photograph, demanding that the eye believe

and interpret a mysterious and

fantastic-seeming image in real-world terms. That the effort

to do this changes

nothing and only underlines the multiple, gut-level associations invoked

by color

and form sums up the various themes of Toxic Color. In a show consisting almost

entirely of art objects that push the limits of what is aesthetically coherent, at or

near the

shifting boundaries between 2D and 3D presentation, Grote’s image

seems especially on

the money. Her poisoning is a subtle affair that uses “real”

elements to break down reality,

moving toward a use of form and color that crosses

the blood barrier of visual

apprehension, shooting directly into the brain.

[Free Times 7/25/07]

Poisoners @ exit (a gallery space)

Untitled. Josh Ryther