6 @ Cass Cafe - October 12 through December 7, 2002

The six artists represented in this exhibition stand in quite different relationships to the world and to their art. While Robert Edwards’ paintings are searchingly introspective, the creations of Karen Klein celebrate the external, natural world. Robert Mirek’s art is a mantra-like articulation of his imagined alternative to the dark and forbidding world suggested in many of the small, powerful paintings of Kip Kowalski. And, while the work of both Nelson Smith and Gerry Craig is more intellectual than that of the other four, Nelson’s stylistic focus contrasts dramatically with the eclectic work of Gerry. Each of these artists has developed a fine voice and distinctive subject matter; the work of each is both beautiful and provocative.

Robert Edwards uses his painting as a vehicle of self-discovery. His paintings are lush, dense, layered expressions of the psychological and emotional landscape of the human consciousness. In his most recent series of paintings, Robert has brought to paper some the techniques he developed on canvas during the last several years. In these works, the use of multiple layers of paint and lacquer suggest the opacity of human emotions and motivations and his use of found objects, the effects of the world upon the soul. Thumb tacks symbolize the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and flower petals the comforting effects of friendship, love and work. Robert’s work is excruciatingly beautiful, and ultimately optimistic; even his darkest paintings glisten when seen from some particular vantage.

Kip Kowalski shares with Robert Edwards an affection for a darker palette. While Kip’s paintings suggest images of the external rather than the internal world, they are no less subjective than Robert’s paintings. Many of Kip’s paintings harken definite feelings of danger and insecurity. Winds howl, the sea roars and the clouds come rolling in. In his oil paintings, sharp and jagged textures project the hazards out at the observer, intensifying the emotional effects of the works. His colors, images and brushstrokes are often dark, violent and aggressive, but the combined effect of these elements is frequently soothing and always beautiful.

Robert Mirek paints a world that is all his own. His work teems with slightly distorted geometric and symmetrical forms, repeated images, and an iconography that expresses the religiosity of primitive art as well as the humor of modern artists such as Miró. The iconographic, mathematical and whimsical elements of Bob’s work are well represented in the only painting included in this exhibition, Number 110. Similar to his paintings, the pieces comprising Bob’s new aluminum series are mathematically ordered and neatly figured, whimsical and retiring. They have an unusual peacefulness; like a 200-year-old Bonsai tree, they seem firmly established and imperturbable. They seem to say, “Welcome to my world. Laugh and be kind, or admission is denied.”

Karen Klein is inspired by the overwhelming beauty and fecundity of the natural world. Abundance and wonder dominate her paintings, which abound with flora and fauna of a dizzying variety. Often Karen’s images overflow out of the painting onto the borders or they are superimposed one upon another, suggesting both the succession of generations and the miracle of natural generation. And like nature, there is a subtle sense of the surreal in Karen’s paintings: the colors are slightly too bright and the mix of species often is fanciful. Karen’s paintings are loving celebrations of life and the sensory opportunities it affords.

Nelson Smith’ s pieces are extraordinarily intellectual and literary in content and style. Indeed, many of the paintings are structured as diptychs or triptychs that create impressions of open books laid across the canvas. And the impression is strengthened frequently, by the inclusion in his compositions of the texts Nelson writes to emphasize the conceptual content of his work. Nelson’s work is serious, but not sober. While his use of surreal images and found objects lend themselves to his themes, they also give his work a childlike playfulness. And, when Nelson incorporates balls in tracks (as in Internal Combustion) and other “interactive toys” into his pieces, he seems to be encouraging us to play too.

There is a good deal of the intellectual and literary in the work of Gerry Craig as well. Indeed, the large wooden triptych included in this exhibition was inspired by Heidegger and is dominated by the text that fills the two side panels. In Anatomy Metamorphosis, Gerry uses the outline of a butterfly to signify the human pelvis and insinuate the common evolutionary roots of all life forms; the superimposition of these images onto the domed edifice suggests that politics, art and architecture are natural extensions of the evolutionary process.

Richard Scott
October, 2002

For more information on the Cass Cafe, click here

For a map to the Cass Cafe, click here