Comments by Juror David FeBland

A great unifying theme of 20th century art was the rejection of three-dimensionality developed over the previous 800 years and its replacement with the two-dimensional plane. Insofar as figuration, and indeed all representation, existed at all, its depiction by serious artists was nearly always iconographic, exclusively symbolic or non-contextual in nature.

As both juror and artist reviewing a large cross-section of presumably figurative works, I am interested in seeing to what extent this trend continues into the new century, and to what degree it is being challenged by a return to traditional picture-making.
While my selections for this show are not intended to advocate for either position, I have some observations about the nature of figuration as it was expressed in the body of work I reviewed.

First, artists applied an exceptionally broad interpretation of the concept of figuration to include all forms of animate objects. I restricted figuration to the human figure, which immediately eliminated nearly half of all entries.

Secondly, artists overwhelmingly chose to express the figure as an internalized concept; self-portraiture, the human body as pure form, the figure in isolation, the figure in interior space were all well represented. My clear sense after reviewing the entries was that the Culture of Self remains ascendant.

I would have liked to have seen more explorations of the human figure as a social, interactive creature, not so much to confirm my own biases but to serve as an effective counterpoint to the above.

Nevertheless, as many artists were conveying a range of disturbing ideas about contemporary life, they were doing so with an increasing commitment to the role of good craftsmanship – and that is a powerful expression of optimism.