Uneven
Surfaces: Fresh landscape perspective stands out in trio’s
Fulton Street exhibit
by
William Jaeger
Special to the Times
Union
One
of the goals of most emerging artists is to work in such a consistent
and original way that their work becomes easily identified with
them. And formal consistency, sometimes to excess, is the rule
with all three artists in Manifested Surfaces, at
the Fulton Street Gallery.
Painter
Robert Longley, photographer Jeri Eisenberg, and sculptor Robert
Birbeck each stick to a single style with conviction and focus,
making their intentions clear and their divergent personal visions
emphatic.
Of
the three, only Longley’s work is involved enough to avoid
the potential redundancy of his approach. His many canvases, large
and small, take landscapes and other views into a fresh, diffused,
layered realm that is not quite like anything you’ve seen
before. And in a heavily worked genre such as landscape, this
is no easy feat.
Perhaps
it isn’t fair to call them landscapes, for the scenes in
them are so foggy and abstract they are unintelligible at first,
just beautiful monochromatic effusions of oil and wax. Only by
standing far back and defocusing the textured surface can you
see the road sweeping up to the horizon, or the line of trees
curving from one edge to another. To some extent, just trying
to decipher the broad views and ambiguous spaces is part of the
intended experience forced on any viewer. They are like views
in a grey, foggy mirror.
Competing
with these scenes are handpainted words and phrases arranged in
neat lines of text over the backgrounds, like scribbles in the
wet glass of the mirror. Though not written with primitive or
expressive gesture, their meanings suggest an internal struggle
that is seemingly personal, often anguished or cynical in tone,
and even bordering at times on obsessive madness.
Some
have wide frames around the canvases with even more, smaller text
wrapping all the way around. Here Longley repeats somewhat despondent
thoughts, such as, “… nobody really cared that much
in the first place …” or, in a different work, “…
and will matter less and less as years pass because you are dead
… .”
The
background scenes are, in their blurriness, composed boldly, creating
a sense of movement and pictorial depth that is at odds with the
static, flat layer of text. You can actually enjoy the paintings
on a visual level alone, letting the words, which are hard or
even impossible to read, serve as an optical trick to draw you
away from the pictorial scene and into the surface. But at some
point, you’ll likely try to read some of the text in order
to probe the work.
One
12-foot-long, two-panel work called Tach it Up, is typical.
In large letters it offers a riff on the Beach Boys: “Two
cool shots sitting side by side yeah my fuel injected Stingray
and a 413 a revvin their engines.” Maybe this rather stilted
image helps explain the landscape behind, which is something like
a view through a windshield.
But
it also relates to an overall title given to all the paintings
in the show, From a Post-Futurist Manifesto. This refers
to the Futurists, a group of machismo Italian poets and artists
from just before World War I who based their art and their lives
on a romanticized notion of speed, action and the glory of machines,
including cars.
But
Longley wisely adds a more subtle and introspective text in smaller
letters behind this, including, “… no way that I could
ever possibly explain it to somebody who didn’t see it …
and it wasn’t just the ridicule that I would have to endure
…” At this point, we are perhaps unprepared to read
and analyze so much material on the spot, but the density of ideas
is welcome, and is meant to gradually unfold for anyone willing
to spend some time with any one work.
Ultimately,
if the meanings seem a bit forced and contrived, as if Longley
knows what serious ideas sound like in theory without necessarily
being so, the paintings are sustained by their raw physical beauty.
Eisenberg's
series of small Polaroid photographs on the second floor balcony
are as cohesive as Longley’s works, and as beautiful in their
own way. What they lack is even the slightest implication or feeling
beyond their surface beauty. Wouldn’t it be nice to have
these pretty little squares filled with riches that would last
more than a single viewing?
But
in a single, quick viewing, the works are at least satisfying.
Each uses a quirky charm inherent in SX-70 prints: The pigments
in a freshly taken image are soft enough to squish around, distorting
the subject and creating surreal variations and unusual textures.
Most of the images are still lifes of food, and they use attractive,
old-fashioned notions of composition and color. The effect is
hushed and soothing in a sleepy kind of way. Maybe it shouldn’t
matter that they are without particular consequence.
Scattered
around the first floor are a series of Birbeck’s stone sculptures
of female nudes. They are difficult to appreciate not only because
they are so commonplace, but because they fall into such sexist
(and boring) cliches of woman as form. Why is it that artists,
including Birbeck, ask their female models to take on that pose
with one arm thrown over her head? It is a gesture of surrender.
It shows woman as languorous object for an implied male observer.
Once again, women are portrayed without purpose or effectiveness.
Luckily,
Birbeck’s objects are hardly noticeable surrounded as they
are by Longley’s vigorous work, which is reason enough to
see the show.
Facts:
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