Thick Skin

Paint Made Flesh
The Phillips Collection
1600 21st Street, NW
Tue- Sat 10am-4pm (Thur 8:30pm) Sundays 11am-6pm

The body has traditionally been used as a symbol in painting, often representing spirituality, idealized beauty and power. Paint Made Flesh, an exhibit put together by the Frist Collection, which is resting at the Phillips Collection in DC for the summer, highlights a different side of humanity, the dark conflicted and anxiety plagued side. The show is comprised of works by a multitude of artists who painted between the 1950s and the present day. The show is divided by themes, time periods and locations, making it difficult to decide where Modern ends and Contemporary begins.

Lucian Freud, Naked Man, Back View, 1991–92, Oil on canvas, 72 1/4 x 54 1/8 in. (183.5 x 137.5 cm). Courtesy of the Metropolitain Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1993 (1993.71).

Although the two Lucian Freud’s date from 1988-89 and 1991-92, they are still very relevant and noteworthy. Freud painted from life over long periods of time and favored friends over professional models; he wanted to portray people as they are, not as they are posed to be. Hailing from the Tate Modern, Standing by the Rags is a magnificent portrait of painter Sophie de Stempel, who worked with Freud for eight years and modeled for him frequently. She is half lying, her body resting on a giant pile of Freud’s painting rags and half standing, her feet planted solidly on the hardwood floor. The perspective leans upwards and only a glimpse of a wall helps to anchor the space. De Stempel’s head rests on her right arm, which is arced over a bulge in the pile, cradled as if there were another person lying with her. Her gesture and facial expression seem to exude a comfort and trust that only close friends can have, but she does not have complete confidence in the stability of Freud’s rags and keeps her feet firmly on the ground. The second Freud painting depicts the controversial performing artist Leigh Bowery. Bowery’s back is turned and a curtain blocks the view into the studio, revealing only the distant wall that Freud used as a palette—these compositional choices speak of a more guarded relationship.

Susan Rothenberg, Crying, 2003, Oil on canvas. 58 1/2 x 63 1/2 in / 148.6. Courtesy of Waddington Galleries. x 161.3 cm

Susan Rothenberg and Tony Bevan paint expressively and reduce narratives to articulate deep, focused feelings of stress and tension. Rothenberg’s “Crying,” an entirely red and white painting—her most frequent colors, because of their fleshy human qualities—depicts a head and neck covered by four hands that seemed to have wiped any recognizable features off the face. The face, hands and arms are red and disembodied, and they emerge from the upper left through a white background that has been layered over red. The work captures the haze and wearing nature of depression. Bevan also uses red and white but in a more restrained aesthetic. The red lines that scar and illustrate “Head” seem to be abstract and cluttered up close, but from far away describe strained, stretched, balloon-like face from a skewed upwards perspective. The face seems to float away, falling apart and coming back together on upon each viewing expressing the struggle to maintain clarity in this complicated world.

Jenny Saville, Hyphen, 1999, Oil on canvas. Private Collection, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. © Jenny Saville

John Currin, The Hobo, 1999, Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Jenny Saville and John Currin are both technically accomplished painters who deal with female beauty from totally different perspectives. Saville moved around a lot as a child, always having to adjust to a new location and new people. She sees herself as an outsider and is attracted to unconventional body types. Her studies with a plastic surgeon led to a discovery of the ‘object-ness’ of flesh, and its ability to be sculpted and manipulated, strangely similar to paint. She confronts and embraces her anxieties about being different with monumental paintings, often self-portraits, which have been built up with large areas of paint layered with a roller. “Hyphen” is a double portrait of the artist and her sister, who is resting her head on Saville’s shoulder. Saville’s eyes seem to dare anyone to judge her, effectively guarding herself and her sister—who stares hesitantly but hopefully into the distance—from the harsh world. By contrast, John Currin embraces the long history of objectifying the female figure in his satirical, campy and playfully hedonistic paintings. He celebrates the ridiculousness of the obsession with a perfect female form in “Nude with Raised Arms,” daring his audience to try look away and to decide whether this smooth creamy young body emerging from a milky blackness is Venus, pornography or both. Even more bluntly camp, “The Hobo” makes fun of the way that everyone, even destitute, downtrodden people, are inexplicably beautiful on bad television. Currin does not accept any guilt for his pleasures but instead dutifully recognizes and embraces the beauty and depravity that seem inexorably intertwined in his view of the world.

Daniel Richter, Duisen, 2004, Oil on canvas, Image Size: 106 1/4 x 137 3/4 inches. Courtesy of David Zwiner Gallery.

German painter, Daniel Richter is concerned with music, current events, and graffiti culture. The craze that overtakes people when they take drugs and infrared pictures inform Richter’s style and present the point of view of “the paranoid westerner,”* a group which he confrontationally and bravely confesses to be a part of. Richter turns current tragic and violent news events into ambiguous paintings that could be read as celebrations. Using neon energetic colors, he layers the complications of living comfortably as part of first world culture while being surrounded by economic, environmental and military problems, both domestic and foreign. “Duisen” is a painting of a crowd of people with upraised arms, who are melting in violent Technicolor in a black cityscape background. They look as if they could be part of a rave at a concert or victims of some as yet unknown bio-weapon. Duisen is a made-up word that is play between the German words that mean millions and south. Richter is referencing the influx of immigrants to Germany from southern countries, bringing with them political, social and economic upheaval.

Paint Made Flesh includes superlative examples by artists Alice Neel, Francis Bacon, Julian Schnabel, Richard Diebekorn and De Kooning and many others that have come from first-rate museums around the world. The Frist has brought together a phenomenal group of paintings but do not expect to find bucolic and carefree works. This is a challenging exhibit that brings together many different stressful concepts and events. If you leave feeling stressed and overwhelmed than the show did exactly what it intended to do.

-Ophra Paul

Paint Made Flesh is on view at the Phillips Collection until September 1st.

*Schatz, Matthias. “Paranoid Westerner” Daniel Richter Paints Crowds, Harlequins, Terror.” Bloomberg.com (July)

**Although I currently work at The Phillips Collection as a Museum Assistant I was not involved with the planning or implementation of Paint Made Flesh. I am not a Phillips Collection spokesperson; I take personal responsibility for this article.

Child’s Play

KENNY HUNTER: LIKE WATER IN WATER, NATHANIEL ROGERS: THE LAST VIKING
Conner Contemporary
1358-60 Florida Ave
Wed-Sat 11am – 5pm

Conner Contemporary Art currently has two shows up in its large space: Kenny Hunter’s Like Water in Water and Nathanial Rogers’s The Last Viking. Both shows are full of sarcasm about, and witty criticism of, contemporary society. Although the shows are presented as separate entities they both use the guise of childlike innocence to tackle large intimidating issues. Hunter and Rogers force us to face our fears by tricking us into confrontation.

Kenny Hunter, Like Water in Water, 2009, resin, jesmonite, steel, paint, 35.43 x 59.06 x 23.62 inches. Copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

Kenny Hunter’s sculptures are pointedly unreal; they replicate the smooth and perfect aesthetic of caricatures and dolls. In this show, Hunter’s work addresses the human driven destruction of our planet. The sculpture after which the exhibit was titled, Like Water in Water, is a life size deer cast in resin and painted in a soft matt tan. The deer is stepping through a tire and some metal lily pads, which are a few inches off the ground thereby communicating that the visitors to the gallery and the deer are walking through a few inches of ‘water.’ The deer looks welcoming and approachable but after a few moments the realization materializes that this piece is a comment on the environment. Like the deer, we are a few inches deep in trouble.

Kenny Hunter, End Product, 2009, jesmonite, 21.65 x 21.65 x 21.65 inches 55 x 55 x 55 cm, Edition of 3. Copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

Similarly, with End Product, an unpainted trash bag, we are met by what seems to be a banal, unassuming piece. At second glance it is realized that the paint brushes, coffee cup and banana peel that have leaked out of a hole in the bottom of the bag are a representation of the artist himself. This self-deprecating self-portrait not only heralds the artist’s own ironic participation in the destruction of out planet but imposes itself as a mirror on the viewer.

Nathaniel Rogers, Nimble Jack, 2009, oil on panel, 8 x 6 inches, 20.3 x 15.2cm. Images are copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art

Nathaniel Rogers’s works uses nursery rhymes depicted in a hyper-realistic style (that any children’s book editor would covet) to address deeply disturbing psychological issues. Most of the nursery rhymes we learned as children actually were created to remember specific, usually distressing, historical events or social issues. They often were not meant for children but for adults to joke and spread gossip. In most cases the actual meaning of the poems was lost and they instead live on as meaningless entertainment. Rogers once again utilizes these catchy rhymes to talk about cultural affairs. The poem “Jack be Nimble” refers to the sport of jumping over candles—a considerably safer version of an earlier sport of jumping over bon fires. Jack is often thought to be the pirate Jack Black who was notorious for escaping from authorities. Rogers’s Nimble Jack is a commentary on self-destruction and medication. His Jack is kneeling in a bedroom, wearing an eye-patch and holding a miniature version of himself over the candle. On the dresser behind Rogers’s Jack are two empty pill bottles and the expression on Jack’s face is obviously disturbed.

Nathaniel Rogers, Jack Horner (The Last Viking), 2009, oil on panel, 6 x 8 inches, 15.2 x 20.3 cm. Images are copyright Kenny Hunter, courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.

In another painting, Jack Horner (The Last Viking), Rogers addresses the poem “Little Jack Horner.” The poem retells the story of the steward to the Bishop of Glasbury. The Bishop was trying to bribe King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell not to destroy his Abbey and steal the treasures inside. The Bishop sent the deeds to twelve English manorial estates hidden in a pie and had the trusted steward Horner deliver them. Horner, in turn, sat on the jury that convicted the Bishop of treason for being loyal to Rome and either stole, or was rewarded with the deeds to the estates. Rogers, interestingly chose himself as the model for Horner; he is wearing a Viking hat, and sitting on a lawn with a stone wall to his back, a dresser at his left and a burning model of a monastery is resting on top of a box marked ‘fragile’ in the foreground.

Conner Contemporary’s choice to exhibit these two artists work at the same time seems appropriate despite there differences in media and subject matter. By easing the viewer into their choice of subject matter, and using comforting familiar imagery the artists are able to create dialogue about often unaddressed and purposefully ignored subjects. Although Conner Contemporary is a little difficult to get to without a car, their space is great and this show makes the trip well worth the bus ride.

-Ophra Paul

KENNY HUNTER: LIKE WATER IN WATER, and NATHANIEL ROGERS: THE LAST VIKING are on view at Conner Contemporary Art until July 25.

Memories of the Mall

Non-Places Installation, Brandon Webster Photography, Copyright Trevor Young

Trevor Young: Non-Places
Flashpoint Gallery
916 G St NW
Tue– Sat 12–6 pm

Globalization causes a great deal of déjà vu; a mall, an airport, or a McDonalds are not much different in Shanghai than in London or New York. These places are familiar, comfortable, recognizable, and yet they are alienating in their repetitive monotony. Memories of these ‘non-places’ that populate our lives blur and lack specificity. Trevor Young’s new project, Non-Places explores the twisted relationship people have to these locations.

Trevor Young is one of the first artists at Flashpoint’s non-profit open-submission gallery to be given a second exhibition; with Non-Places Young takes complete advantage of the opportunity. The project consists of many paintings; some large, some small, some on canvas, some on board, mounted to project from the wall at different depths. The work is meant to be seen as a whole, not as individual paintings hung together. The paintings in Non-Places are constructed from memories of airports, hotel rooms, highways, restaurants, bathrooms and other public spaces with no defining characteristics to tie them to a specific time and space. Young offers these spaces as holy icons and dull, unfriendly, desolate aftermaths. Gold  and copper leaf around the edges of some of the smaller paintings produces a soft glow while rough paint strokes give them a distinctly human feel. The multi-depth mounting generates the effect of vacillating memories. People are missing from the sterile environments but whether that is due to some cataclysmic disaster or an edit in a memory is left ambiguous.

Non-Places Installation, Brandon Webster Photography, Copyright Trevor Young

Many Modern photographers such as Ed Ruscha, Martha Rosler and Stephen
Shore have also explored the alienating qualities of these repeating scenes but exploring these spaces in painting brings in something new. Because Young’s application of the paint is very human, inaccurate and fuzzy it allows for a dreamlike quality to his works, in contrast to photography’s stark dead reality. In fact, many of Young’s non-places aren’t specific locations at all, but composites of many different places. In some of the works, like the large painting of a helicopter landing next to a glass residential building (a pun referencing architect Phillip Johnson), the composite is evident and the work has an obvious, unreal, quality to it, while in other works it becomes a guessing game as to whether the painting is an actual place or not. Since in real life, non-places repeat with only slight variation it can be hard to separate them in our memories. Young effectively recreates this frustrating dubiety.

It is important that the paintings be viewed together as an installation to reinforce the repetitive monotony of the spaces. One piece alone cannot capture the power of this message. It is also interesting to note that gallery spaces are non-places themselves, if not constructed to be so. Galleries are meant to disappear—showcasing the art they hold, and not themselves. Young seemed to recognize this irony in his placement of a small painting of a rat below the water fountain in the Flashpoint Gallery.

-Ophra Paul

Non-Places is on view at Flashpoint Gallery until June 6th.