Red, Yellow, Butter, 2007 Laminated Wood and Enamel
The Elmhurst Art Museum is exhibiting three artists with diverse styles and yet a common sensibility in terms of attention to detail and the finished surface.
Emmett Kerrigan constructs wooden assemblages that are painted with high gloss enamel paint and both the wood working and the painting have a careful, clean, highly polished aesthetic. The abstract pieces such as Red, Yellow, Butter, 2007 (right) share color harmonies, compositional elements and surfaces as the more representational Cityscapes, where Kerrigan uses industrial architecture to find forms and lines, much like Charles Demuth.
Several paintings from the Studies of Tops series add a sense of scale to the exhibit and take the viewer seamlessly through a pleasing visual experience full of color, texture, and carefully arranged shapes.
An interactive game table is set up in the middle of the gallery with a sign encouraging visitors to touch and play the game. The brightly colored tops can be wound with a cord and spun for a surprisingly long time as they either knock over pins or move through dividers on the table. It is satisfying to be able to touch the turned wooden game piece tops and to set them in motion. Feeling the weight of them and the smooth surface informs the rest of the work for the viewer.
Nikki Renee Anderson shares Kerrigan's love of the surface, rounded forms, and intense colors although she has pared her work down to a more narrow vocabulary. In her Cherry Series she is presenting white ceramic forms that are dripping with blood red acrylic that simultaneously connote desserts and flesh, desire and repulsion, consumption and excretion. The addition of sound, the artists voice in a whisper and a soft moan, heightens the message and reveals the personal narrative quality of the work.
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The inclusion of the mostly black and white representational images of Bill Frederick at first seems to be an attempt to add variety to the exhibit. Although his work is very different from Anderson's and Kerrigan's, once the viewer realizes that they are not photographs but rather ink, watercolor, or graphite pieces, an aesthetic connection emerges. The excellent craft of the artwork and the attention to detail, surface, and the final product unites the three. Frederick also is sharing a personal narrative using familiar imagery of ordinary life that addresses ways of seeing, perception, and a sense of place.
This exhibit continues through Mar 21, 2010.
For more information: about planning your visit to the Elmhurst Art Museum.
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