Barthelemy Toguo, "Purification XXIII." Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery.
Two current shows in Chelsea display very different ways artists use liquid media to create figures in their paintings. Barthelemy Toguo's "Pregnant Mountain" at Robert Miller Gallery features a number of large watercolors of human and animal shapes. Whereas Toguo creates distinct outlines for his figures and paints inside the shapes, Virginia Martinsen's "A Face on Mars" at ATM Gallery builds paint into permeable, indistinct forms that viewers project definition onto. Toguo draws a crisp line between his figures and ground; Martinsen's very subject is that this isn't necessary -- as viewers, we will see human subjects even when they're not there.
The fact that water dries quickly allows artists using watercolor to work fast. The pigment in watercolor is essentially suspended in water, and as the water dries, the pigment stays behind. Adding water, then, will make the pigment bleed, and leaning the paper will make the color drip. These are two techniques Barthelemy Toguo uses to great effect in his watercolors.
Toguo is an international artist from Cameroon whose work deals with issues of the African diaspora. He works in a variety of media, and the show at Robert Miller includes video, sculpture, installation, photography, and watercolor drawings. The drawings, which are mostly larger than life-sized, feature exaggerated human shapes, giraffes, food, weapons, and a playing card motif. At times the paintings are reminiscent of Nancy Spero’s or Francisco Clemente’s in their physical use of paint as a metaphor for the body.
Toguo's eccentric figures can have huge hands or multiple arms, or just be body parts. Because there's frequently no context or background for these figures, they can be too illustrative and seem to float in space. But by drawing a perimeter around the body and allowing the colors to fill the space inside, Toguo creates liquid interior landscapes.
Click here to see more watercolors by Barthelemy Toguo
Several of the figures in Toguo's work have nails sticking out of their bodies like African power figures, in which, according to the Brooklyn Museum, "Nails and blades are driven into the figure, either to affirm an oath or to destroy an evil force responsible for an affliction or disruption of the community." The effect in Toguo's work can be brutal. Since we don't see the world these figures inhabit, the nails are symbols of outside forces being driven in. The subject of these paintings, complemented by the watercolor medium, is the misty lights and impenetrable darks of our interiors and the endless range of hues in each.
In the drawing "Purification XII," the soft line down the leg is like a bone structure, except unlike in bone there is no clear definition. We don't know where things inside us begin and end. They run into one another in ways that have general shape, but don't always make sense. At its best, this effect is an enchanting surprise
Virginia Martinsen, "Reclining Female Nude." Courtesy ATM Gallery.
While Toguo's work involves his travel around the world, Virginia Martinsen's goes to Mars and comes back to be a mirror in front of us. Martinsen paints abstractly by pouring paint and pigment onto big canvases. Where Toguo's watercolors are thin and his figures defined, Martinsen's canvases are thickly crusted with paint. Her explicit subject is pareidolia—the human tendency to see faces and figures on natural and chance objects.
We see faces everywhere. We see them in clouds, on toast, on mountains, and in the source of Martinsen's title--photos brought back from Viking 1's mission to the planet Mars. Seeing figures in Martinsen's canvases at first seems like the opposite of seeing the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, however.
These canvases demand to be taken seriously but have at their core an element of doubt. With their black and white paint applied in a heavy lava-like flow, the work is stark, heavy and brooding. The titles of Martinsen's paintings can be philosophical ("A Refutation of the Argument from Beauty," "The Quandary of Pascal's Wager") but also whimsical ("The Search for the Celestial Teapot," "The objectively implausible, but subjectively appealing belief in our own immortal souls").
Martinsen does not project a specific image but hedges her bets. Instead of taking up a brush to paint her "Reclining Female Nude," she lets the paint and varnish run and settle into pools on the canvas until she discovers a figure. As her medium and varnish separate, figures and lines are formed almost by chance. Martinsen pushes her colors to their capacity; black becomes warm, cool, glossy, matte, indescribable.
When the paint gets heavy in the middle of the canvas and dries into yolk-like yellow centers, Martinsen yields to the will of her materials but also seems to know broadly what the pieces will look like. The specifics are discovered, edited, and expanded upon. It is this dialogue between paint and painter that makes the work exciting and unpredictable. With "A Face on Mars," it builds into a particular kind of meaning in the search for images of ourselves.
We delight at chance images of human faces because they make us believe the universe is carrying our photo around in its wallet. Even though this is completely wishful thinking, it seems to affirm our existence as a special form of life with deep cosmic importance. Thinking of this idea, I was reminded of a passage by Jack Tworkov in which he describes the intricate enjoyment painters have when they create good work. When he looks at a Cezanne, says Tworkov, “he did not make it for me, but it is there for me to have.” This is the fraught and fruitful relationship between paintings and spectators, the world and its people.
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