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The unexpected twist
Perfect Pitch by Terry Rodgers |
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 29, 2002
Art exhibits in Dunedin surprise the viewer by skewing traditional assumptions about human relationships, physical being and the natural order.
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DUNEDIN -- About halfway through "Private Lives," an exhibition of paintings by Terry Rodgers at Dunedin Fine Art Center, you might ask, as I did: Where did this guy find these people?
The gallery walls are filled with enough toned and tanned people in glamorous settings to fill a month's worth of ads in Town and Country. But these are not folks reveling in their good fortune and excellent genes. They turn away from each other in louche poses, tastefully dressed and dripping with ennui and attitude. We stare, fascinated, as if a moment in time were frozen in a display window.
These paintings appeal in the same way that tabloid gossip fascinates, but they avoid the sensationalism of such reportage through their complex psychological layers and technical proficiency. The obvious technique the artist could have chosen for this subject matter is photorealism. But their brushstroked fabrics and flesh hearken back to the portraits of John Singer Sargent, by way of contemporary artist Philip Pearlstein. Their formal composition recalls the mise en scenes of the northern Renaissance.
Beneath a veneer of refinement and restraint, a sexual charge flows through The Declension of Time. The viewer comes to the scene in the middle of a party in a large room furnished in modernist style with lots of beige and black. Though it glows with light and the reflection of glass and polished surfaces, it is not a warm and inviting place.
Beach #1 by Robert Beach
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In the foreground, a man looks toward a woman with what appears to be veiled interest. She has turned away, her eyes downcast; her off-the-shoulder dress could sheath a dismissive shrug or a come-hither gesture. In this almost-encounter, the artist demonstrates his mastery of perspective, using the crisscross straps of a woman's backless dress in an x-marks-the-spot point of convergence of the room's lines and planes.
To the side is an unexpected slash of color, the red jacket of a young man who looksquizzically at the couple. Clothing means much in Rodgers' paintings, and this young man's is a signal that he is apart from the crowd, the only person in the room aware that a human drama might be unfolding.
Perfect Pitch is another social scene, in black, white and gray, except for a young woman wearing a pink dress. The color is echoed in the ribbons on a white standard poodle sitting next to her. The same disconnection between people permeates the work. That the woman in pink is Asian -- the only nonwhite person in the room, and looking lonely or bored -- seems to jab at the homogeneity of upper-income America. No African-Americans or Hispanics inhabit these landscapes.
The most disturbing painting in the group, Halloween Breakfast, ought to be a scene of domestic charm. Instead, it is full of menace. In the breakfast room of what looks like a grand house, a mother, wrapped in a robe that exposes her bra, sits at the table reading the newspaper. Her daughter wears a Dalmatian costume, mask perched on her head like a hat. The arm of a third person, presumably another child, reaches for a plate. Behind the little girl, a man -- her father? -- is also robed, but it's untied, exposing his naked body. Homey details -- a carved pumpkin, ruffled chair cushion -- clash with the little girl's apparent desire to flee the scene.
What are we to make of these paintings? They can be viewed as existential vignettes, or scenes from a latter-day Henry James novel with a sensibility, in James' words, "of the strange and sinister embroidered on the . . . normal and easy."
In other galleries at Dunedin Fine Art Center are exhibitions by Robert Beach and Melissa Miller Nece.
Beach's work as a medical illustrator serves his subject matter well. He deconstructs the human body, then reassembles it, creating compressed, disjointed figures that are often connected to a second set of body parts. It sounds clinical but, as with cubist painters who pioneered this idea, it is not.
But unlike cubist paintings, which suggest motion, Beach's are static, like the partial bodies of antique sculptures he says are his inspiration. A few of them in the show, titled "The Reassembled Figure," are glum and a little clumsy, but those with the most personality -- also, not coincidentally, those with heads -- have an interesting cut-and-paste quality to them. They are reminiscent of those children's books, cut into horizontal strips, with which any number of outlandish figures could be created by mixing up body zones.
Nece is a popular teacher at the center, and her medium, colored pencils, is one rarely seen. She uses them with great finesse in Between Sand and Sky, capturing shifting light that changes the water, sky and sand along our coast from moment to moment. All these drawings are horizontal, divided into three planes of earth, water and sky, the main players in most of her work. People unsettled by Rodgers' or Beach's work will have their faith in the natural order restored by Nece's benign landscapes.
Review
"Private Lives, The Vision of Terry Rodgers," "The Reassembled Figure," paintings by Robert Beach, and "Between Sand and Sky," work by Melissa Miller Nece, are at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, 1143 Michigan Blvd., through Oct. 6. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. The center will be closed from Friday through Monday for the Labor Day weekend. (727) 298-3322.
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