DON SOKER - MERIDIAN

(with assistance from RWM)

01.21.10

Don Soker Gallery: Eleanor Wood - Working From Both Sides, Works On Paper and Stretched Linen.

Review by RWM: Abstract, but with form and design. The works are precise with detail and intracacies. The predetermined forms are confrontational in their solidness, but also contained. Though paintings, they also speak to architecture.

Comment by AB: According to the deposition, Eleanor Wood's show title, Working From Both Sides, "refers to both method and geography," meaning she makes art on both sides of the Atlantic, though it references both sides of her canvases as well. Wood considers all components of her precise geometric vintage-tinged artworks (stretchers, oil bar, wax, thread, paper, linen) to be integral to her finished products. In other words, it's about everything, not just what you see as it hangs, the backs able to be appreciated as well as the fronts (my favorite kind of art, BTW). Her works on paper bleed into their margins, apparently purposeful, but I'm a mite concerned over how this may play out over time.

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Meridian Gallery: Unexpected Reflections - The Portrait Reconsidered. Curated by Terri Cohn.

Artists: JD Beltran, Jim Campbell, Gigi Janchang, Marion Gray.

Comment by AB: Love this show. If you think portraits are boring static likenesses that line the hallowed halls of wherever, time to think again... and to see this exhibit.

On the ground floor, JD Beltran makes a statement about the evolution of imaging by seamlessly combining the mediums of painting, photography, film, and digital video into single works of art. She orders those mediums chronologically, according to when they came into fashion, starting with painting and progressing through photography, 16mm film, and finally to digital video. A daunting challenge well met.

On the second floor, Jim Campbell displays a portrait of a man and one of a woman on video monitors. A barely visible point of light repetitively traverses across each image from left to right, and as it passes over colors in that image, those colors are in turn projected onto the wall around the image. The result is a rather hypnotic and haunting effect.

On the third floor, Gigi Janchang essays on the continuum of past, present and future by combining vintage and contemporary photographs into eerie amalgams, and also on the idea that we are all one by combining facial features of people she knows into stunningly odd composites. Highly recommended on all counts.

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