Artwork overview: Work, images cross dimensions in Portland solo reveals

Nick Benfey, “Yard Prism Void” Picture courtesy of the artist

The world of goals has intrigued artists for hundreds of years, maybe most notably the Surrealists. The infinite supply of their attract is their multidimensionality. These reveries don’t dwell in a single airplane of actuality however are, as an alternative, poised at an intersection of any variety of them, which forces our minds to flee the standard constructed human thought processes and enter right into a universe of the irrational.

This transition frees us to expertise feelings, states and sensations in unfiltered, undiluted methods which are extra fast, visceral and compelling. And if we’re fortunate, they assist us contact into deeper truths of which we’re not usually conscious throughout our waking hours.

Two present solo reveals – Nick Benfey’s “Constellations” at Moss Galleries in Portland (via Jan. 7) and “Bernard C. Meyers: City Abstracts” at Cove Road Arts (via Jan. 14) – hover fascinatingly on this multidimensionality.

“Constellations” debuts the work of an unique and thrilling painter, a Portlander-turned-New Yorker simply on the cusp of 30. Benfey’s artist assertion quotes the French thinker Gaston Bachelard from his e-book “Poetics of House”: “We have now the impression that the celebs in heaven come to stay on earth, that the homes of males type earthly constellations.”

That’s in all probability why, as I considered the present – and earlier than assembly Benfey or studying his assertion – Bachelard had been rattling round my mind, specifically these strains from the identical quantity: “We consolation ourselves by reliving reminiscences of safety. One thing closed should retain our reminiscences, whereas leaving them their unique worth as photos. Reminiscences of the surface world won’t ever have the identical tonality as these of residence and, by recalling these reminiscences, we add to our retailer of goals; we’re by no means actual historians, however all the time close to poets, and our emotion is maybe nothing however an expression of poetry that was misplaced.”

With few exceptions, Benfey’s work are set at evening, so his depiction of the closed area of reminiscence coemerging with recollections of an outdoor, typically bygone, world arises via a layered palette of twilight blues, violets, teals and blacks, that are illuminated by streetlamps and the glowing inside lights of homes and buildings. The latter impart the sense of Bachelard’s “earthly constellations.”

What’s palpable about these scenes is the ephemerality of their nature. We all know these constellations will disperse and disappear with daylight. However as our minds commit them to reminiscence, they preserve the important glittering, shimmering beguilement that originally captivated us. In that sense, Benfey’s work are manifestations of absolutely the subjectivity of notion and reminiscence.

As such, they’re additionally interrogations into what’s actual and what’s imagined, what’s inside and what’s exterior. If we comply with this line of questioning to its transcendental excessive, they are often seen as expressions of that liminal area between existence and non-existence, the place these distinctions disappear and every part is subsumed in a single porous, perpetually morphing consciousness.

Many work include odd, inexplicable voids or compositional anomalies (a minimum of from a waking, rational perspective). Most literal is “Yard Prism Void,” a twilight scene of homes with a shared yard and, teasingly within the foreground, a boxy cavity within the grass that opens into darkish vacancy. What’s this doing right here?, we marvel. The place does it lead?

The void presents us with a primal existential concern: that the self will perish if we soar into this mysterious chasm of not-knowing. That is solely discomfiting, after all, if we’re connected to our constructed actuality. However this form of irrational trepidation is exactly what the Surrealists trafficked in and exploited.

A portray like “Basis” makes the void main, a glowing and considerably eerily magnetic presence within the middle of the canvas. We sense this isn’t merely a constructing’s basis, however a portal to another dimension. We would really feel ourselves visually skirting it, resisting being sucked into it.

Nick Benfey, “Infinite Parking Lot” Picture courtesy of the artist

“Infinite Parking Lot” additionally incorporates a void: a tunnel-like darkness within the higher third of the image airplane. It’s a bizarrely incongruous, although gorgeously painted, picture of a car parking zone spreading out by itself dimensional airplane throughout a mountainous panorama. We get the sense that, if unchecked, its black asphalt will proceed increasing till it obliterates every part – the highway that winds across the cliffs (already partially obscured underneath it), the bushes, the homes. Mysteriously, it’s not the highway that disappears into the tunnel, however the car parking zone itself. The portray fully subverts our regular method of perceiving actuality.

This work’s companion is “Beneath a Parking Lot.” Right here, what we feared would occur has already occurred. We’re underneath the car parking zone seeing its underside from a grave’s-eye view. We’re now not exterior in nature however buried beneath the city sprawl.

Nick Benfey, “Cosmic Fort and Cloverleaf Interchange” Picture courtesy of the artist

In reality, city sprawl is one in every of Benfey’s undercurrents. In two works, a freeway interchange and a highway are dwarfed by the ghostly presences of a fortress (“Cosmic Fort and Cloverleaf Interchange”) and a house (“Chimera”) looming within the sky above them. For me, these work dropped at thoughts archeological websites that reveal a number of buildings constructed on high of one another by a sequence of various civilizations. The cathedral in Toledo, Spain, as an example, was constructed through the thirteenth and 14th centuries over a mosque, which in flip was constructed on the foundations of a sixth-century church.

These will be learn as layers of expertise and reminiscence that type what we establish as data (the idea behind epistemology, which was the topic of Bachelard’s philosophical treatise). However most, if not all, mystical traditions additionally preserve the innate insubstantiality of area and time. They’re merely buildings we impose to order our actuality. At a elementary degree, every part is all the time right here, on this second at each second.

From that perspective, the fortress and the house will be perceived as buildings that have been razed and plowed over to construct the highway and freeway. But, just like the persistence of reminiscence, they’re metaphysically indestructible, all the time current regardless of their bodily immateriality. Every construction, to make use of Bachelard’s phrases, is “an expression of poetry that was misplaced,” and Benfey is a kind of folks the thinker describes as “by no means actual historians, however all the time close to poets.”

FLOATING URBAN WORLDS

Bernard C. Meyers is a photographer based mostly in Minot who, although Bachelard couldn’t be farther from his thoughts, achieves the same impact of altered actuality via unconventionally constructed landscapes.

His methodology begins with an image of a topic, often structure or streetscape. Utilizing digital software program, Meyers isolates particular person parts of every shot and rearranges them, blowing up some into total fields of coloration, minimizing others, then making use of them to the image airplane in ways in which distort and/or erase the unique picture.

“City Abstracts: Boston 8400a,” 44” x 32″ Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Museum Etching Paper, A number of Restricted Version A/P Picture by Bernard C. Meyers

The goal, explains the gallery handout, is to “rattle the bones of actuality.” Meyers is within the interstices the place images and summary expressionism meet. In the identical assertion, he explains that his purpose is to “{photograph} one thing not for what it’s however for what it might probably develop into.”

What these photos “develop into” finally ends up referencing, deliberately or not, fascinating factors in artwork historical past. A picture like “Salt Lake 2183,” for instance, seems to straddle European neoclassical structure and the work of Dutch grasp graphic artist M.C. Escher. Shut scrutiny of its visible content material signifies the unique picture may need been of a jewellery retailer, maybe Tiffany & Co.

The proportions of its elliptical staircase in addition to a copper mansard and brick walkway all point out neoclassicism. So does the way in which Meyers composes the picture, which seems nearly like an architectural rendering. However, like Escher, the views are a number of, skewing any logical understanding of it. What’s foreground and background? Up or down? Inside or out?

This difficulty of perspective additionally harks again, in sure photos, to Eleventh-century Chinese language portray, the place landscapes truly contained a number of views – one from above, one from under, one straight on – in a single picture. The impression is that these landscapes are floating in an indeterminate area.

“City Abstracts: Hong Kong 7714bc,” 32”x 24”, Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Museum Etching Paper, A number of Restricted Version 1/5 Picture by Bernard C. Meyers

The floating high quality is most obvious in “Hong Kong 7714bc.” A scaffolded structure appears to levitate in the course of the image inside a cacophony of fuming colours – crimson, yellow, turquoise. Slightly than an ethereal panorama of mountains and bushes and waterfalls drifting among the many clouds, this seems like a dense city panorama suspended inside the frenetic vitality of the town. “Chicago 192,” “Hong Kong 8583a,” “Salt Lake 1847” and others appear to transmit this high quality, primarily via what seems like parts that Meyers has manipulated to telegraph a way of shifting blurriness or vapor.

Others, equivalent to “Boston 4272a” or “New York, Midtown Insanity,” appear fractured via a Cubist lens. Or they’ll seem like a Kurt Schwitters collage, as in “Hong Kong 7596ac” and “Miami 7383.”

Whether or not one makes these associations or not is irrelevant. The mesmerizing side is the way in which our thoughts tries to decipher the conflict of colours and types pulled out of any representational context – clearly a chief goal of summary expressionism.

Jorge S. Arango has written about artwork, design and structure for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He will be reached at: [email protected] 

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