Robert Mirek embarked upon a new period of artistic expression in 1998, when he began distilling from his exploration of primitive and modern mythologies, metaphors and symbols, a personal iconography with which to represent some of the key elements of his world view: order, recurrence, repetition, symmetry, fraternity and humor. Meanwhile, Mirek began using this iconography to develop a more allusive, even ambiguous style, producing compositions that stimulate in various viewers strangely disparate images and texts. Mirek also completed in the past five years a large number of explicitly narrative and figurative pieces that combine with the allusive compositions to articulate his highly personal worldview. The work to date comprises five series: the Upanishad Series, Recent Paintings, Float Drawings, the Aluminum Series and Found Constructions. Although the series are distinguished one from another by material and intellectual composition, the oeuvre has an elemental coherence, a sort of dynamic equilibrium in which the series revolve in orbits around a gravitational center articulated by Mirek's creative vision. With this exhibition, we have our first opportunity to examine and evaluate exemplary compositions from all five series.

The UPANISHAD SERIES are mixed media constructions representing Hindi mythological themes, through which Mirek represents the universal human concerns that are the womb of all mythology and religion. Like the religious paintings of the Italian renaissance artists, Mirek's early Upanishad compositions are literal renderings of the sacred texts. In Upanishad Series Number Sixty-One, for example, he depicts straightforwardly the Ramayana Upanishad in which the earth is divided and supported by four elephant deities: he represents earth with a stone covered ring, on the perimeter of which he has positioned one fabricated plastic elephant at each of the four points of the compass. Embedded in the earth is an oceanic serpent surrounding an elemental copper core. These early pieces reveal Mirek's construction of the mythological and symbolic midden in which he would concoct some of his most potent icons and symbols. Consider the way in which he plays with representation of the elephant throughout the series. As the series progresses, the literal images used in the early pieces are gradually relieved of superfluous detail until finally, the elephant is reduced to its elemental shape: the parabola, the parabola with which Thomas Pynchon represents the life force in Gravity's Rainbow and James Joyce (representing the parabola as a rainbow) in Finnegans Wake. Thus, the elephant who previously carries on his back the earth and life's animating energy, emerges in the later Upanishad compositions - the framed pieces in particular - as the life force itself. But, like those of Pynchon and Joyce, Mirek's parabolic symbol carries a sense of the indeterminate, the uncertain, the mysterious. The parabola is but one example of the many forms and colors with which Mirek infused symbolic meaning while working out the Upanishad Series.

To Mirek all painting is sculpture, and in his RECENT PAINTINGS we find explicit expression of this proposition. The oil paint is heavy and rather laid than brushed onto the "canvas". The pallet generally is simple and bold. The finishes are rich, almost mouthwatering. Textures are carved, stirred and folded into the voluptuous layers of paint to evoke impressions more commonly associated with tactile than visual experiences. This sensuality complements nicely the intellectual and emotional power of the paintings. Mirek incorporates into his paintings a wider range of mythological sources, including references, for example, to the Book of Kells and Celtic myths and runes. They suggest earth, space, the gods, and life's enduring mystery. But, the references are manipulated, personalized just enough to avoid the explicitly narrative or figurative, to evoke in different viewers a variety of freely associated images, conveying Mirek's conviction that reality is fundamentally subjective. Biting whimsy is an element common to all five series, but Mirek realizes his whimsical intentions most effectively in the paintings. Many are amusing directly; others evoke satirical or comic cultural associations and cynical impressions of contemporary cultural vacuity.

The FLOAT DRAWINGS is a small but pivotal series. The drawings, composed in less than 12 months, are a transitional series, the pupa out of which both the Recent Paintings and the Aluminum Series metamorphosed. In the monochromatic Float Drawings, Mirek uses a stripped down technique - graphite and burned mylar - to explore more directly form and texture, to strip superfluous detail to reveal the elemental and eternal. Familiar symbols of earth, life and energy introduced in the Upanishad Series receive further development. Mirek also begins exploration of some of the botanical and anatomical forms that he develops more extensively in the Aluminum Series. He produces textures and three-dimensionality with pencil by shading and by repeating forms that resemble patterns in nature, such as the microscopic cellular structure of organic tissue. The mindfulness of the Float Drawings, the artistic care and attention to compositional detail, both soothes and engages the viewer. Mounted against earth-tone backgrounds, the monochromatic compositions have a simple elegance.

The ALUMINUM SERIES is a direct and logical extension of the Float Drawings, a further expression of Mirek's desire to escape the constraints of the "canvas", to manipulate freely the overall structure of his compositions. The structure of the pieces has the intimacy of the early Upanishad compositions and the Found Constructions. Suspended, slightly projected, they commune directly with the room and the viewer. Though wrought from one of the most industrial of materials, surprising warmth permeates the startlingly bold compositions. The pieces are reminiscent in form and material of the armor, shields, and escutcheons of medieval knights and nobles. But, while escutcheons bore coats of arms that distinguished families one from the next, Mirek strives for the universal. Anatomical, celestial and mythological forms and icons suggest the elemental communality of life. The geometry and detail is full of warmth and fraternity, which seem to rest upon the substrate of self-protection and security suggested by the material and the compositional forms. The Aluminum Series is an elegant allegory for the delicate balance of opposites that underlies all complex systems in equilibrium, both individual and communal.

In his FOUND CONSTRUCTIONS, Mirek uses various found objects to construct pieces with wide ranging subjects, themes and moods: a confession of disinterest in Marcel Proust, models of mythical moths, flights of whimsical fancy, and myth and religion, too. Although the series is quite recent, many of the pieces are as explicit and literal as the early Upanishad compositions. In Raindance No. 156, for example, Mirek combines a piece of metal, some optic fiber and a photographic transparency to represent the rain dance, a familiar expression of the universal belief that human intervention is necessary but not sufficient to sustaining the climatic, ecological and biological cycles upon which human survival depends. But, Mirek does not allow us to see the rain dance and its underlying rationale as strictly primitive or naïve. Note the "+" embossed on the metallic cloud. This is an excellent example of Mirek's use of symbols, found or constructed, to develop subtexts to create compositional tensions between various constructions of reality; in this case, the symbol refers to the charged ions scientists claim bombard the clouds to stimulate rain. This subtle allusion to scientism calls our attention to contemporary efforts to "seed" clouds. It illuminates the elemental human anxiety rising out of the capriciousness of nature, the universality of which is overwritten by superficial differences in conceptualization and iconography that we naively define as progress, man's mastery of nature. The Found Constructions are peppered with allusive details that are as frequently amusing as they are provoking.

Robert Mirek's art is complex and amusing. It is an assault against indifference, indifference to justice, art and beauty. The work embodies a resilience rooted in strident self-determination, acceptance and humor. It is a testimony to the essential subjectivity of experience and a personal armory against the absurd.

Richard Scott
March, 2003
scottman@comcast.net

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