The Peaceable Kingdom, a one-man show featuring Kevin Sloan, opens February 9 at Naples' Gardner Colby Gallery with a reception for the artist from 5:30-7:30 p.m. "Once again, Mr. Sloan ushers us into the wonderful world of Magical Realism," says Gardner Colby in their press release announcing the exhibition. "The Peaceable Kingdom is a special place that sees a world in balance, at rest and at peace. In this collection of rich and beautiful tableaus that are as allegorical as they are whimsical, Sloan looks at the world with the eye of a poet."
Magical realism describes paintings that tap into the viewer's emotional reservoirs by hiding unsuspected or suggestive content in what might otherwise seem like a common, ordinary scene. Perhaps the most famous example of the genre is the Andrew Wyeth masterpiece, Christina's World.
At first blush, Wyeth's painting seems to depict a young, dark-haired girl gazing at a distant farmhouse from a field of brown grass. There's an air of mystery or ambiguity, but the principle underlying magical realism is that we usually don't appreciate the true meaning of even the simplest phenomena.
Upon closer inspection, you realize Christina is not young. She's in her 50s. She's not languorously reclining in that field either. Disabled, she is using her thin, deformed arms to drag herself toward home. Suddenly, what appears to be a peaceful, idyllic scene takes on a sad, even horrific tenor.
Like Wyeth, Sloan employs seemingly ordinary objects to portray a deeper understanding of reality. But he also includes a plethora of rare and beautiful animals - threatened, endangered and extinct species such as sea turtles, whooping cranes (of which there were but 16 in the 1940s and only 263 today) and carrier pigeons (whose numbers were once counted in the billions and whose flocks were so big it took three days for them to pass overhead).
"They're as important and worthy of ... attention as any king, queen, duke or duchess," Sloan explained during his 2011 Artist Talk lecture at Gardner Colby Gallery. "Noble portraits of regal animals."
In last year's Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition, he encouraged his viewers to make a connection between the rare in nature and the rare among the man made. "What's different this [year]," Sloan told American Art Collector magazine in January (vol. 75, p. 100), "is that I've tried to step back a little from the more strident approach to the environment ... I wanted to create images of abundance and joy and even a little bit of humor amid these trying times we find ourselves living in."
Like any good magical realist, Sloan portrays his subjects in a sharp, unsentimental, unemotional way. His compositions are packed with images, but whereas paintings from his Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition juxtaposed intricately-detailed subjects in still life foregrounds against distant landscapes contained in backdrop paintings, the works in The Peaceable Kingdom are actually set outdoors to give them a lighter, more open quality.
The title of the exhibit can be traced to folk artist Edward Hicks' 1826-1840 series by the same name. In Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom, people and animals, Colonists and Native Americans, are shown in balance and harmony. But whereas an idyllic calmness and peace pervade Hicks' compositions, Sloan conveys the idea that in the modern world, harmony is balanced precariously on thin, narrow tightrope.
"For me, balance is a recurring theme," says Sloan, who uses the metaphor to signify both the ecological balance the planet is struggling to achieve as well as the financial equilibrium each of us fights to restore in a recessionary economy. "It's not my intent to politicize this struggle," Kevin insists. "But it is an emotional state we're all dealing with. So it is my challenge as an artist to devise images that symbolize this struggle but which are aesthetic enough to transcend our mundane problems."
Gardner Colby Gallery is located at 386 Broad Avenue South, which is better known as Naples' Gallery Row. The show runs through February 21st. Kindly R.S.V.P. for the opening reception by calling 239 403 7787 or email: art@gardnercolbygallery.com.
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