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Indepth Arts News: "Arterial: Organic Intersections of the New Cityscape" 2007-02-21 until 2007-03-18 Viveza Gallery Seattle, WA, USA United States of America
Each artist has their own, unique way of engaging the viewer in the ongoing
discourse surrounding man-
kind's role in nature. When taken together, these works emphasize a shift in
ideas about urban living
and the environment, as is reflected locally in Seattle's new "Metronatural"
slogan and the like-minded
design of the SAM Olympic Sculpture Park, as well as globally in the U.N.
Environment program's
recent report on global warming.
The ever-evolving "American Dream" is given a sardonic finish in Santer's
works, which evolved from
simple drawings of highway interchanges under construction.
"Before long, I was manipulating and fragmenting them into isolated knots of
empty overpasses, seem-
ingly being constructed and abandoned at the same time," he said. "The
paintings that followed seemed
to develop with inherent contradictions contained within: Road completions
through misalignment, con-
crete dressed with the colors and words of fantasy, romanticism meeting the
cold, hard pavement."
While Santer's works often relate a sense of optimism, he always brings the
viewer back to reality by
referencing the awesome power of natural forces. Romantic phrases trail of
toward the horizon only to
be sucked into a tornado or dropped into a canyon from the edge of a road to
nowhere. In other works,
highways entangle in knots that resemble the unchecked growth of an asphalt
heartworm.
Jeff Koegel shares Santer's paradoxical vision of the "metronatural"
landscape. Using a patchwork
method, Koegel covers portions of his canvases as he paints so that he can't
compare what he's creating
with what he's created. This "blindness" produces unintended results.
"The paintings might look carefully planned out, but actually I begin with
only a partial drawing, which
the painting is built on, altered and developed instinctively," he said.
The results are contradictory landscapes --smokestacks or volcanoes emit
noxious, billowing clouds that
trace the outline of a futuristic spaceship, a fantastic cityscape, an
ancient temple or vascular forms
that could be tree trunks, ventricles, or a cross section of metropolitan
plumbing.
Brian Scott Campbell also focuses on unfolding cityscapes and alteration of
living spaces. He conjures
up intersections of manmade and natural environments in several mediums,
including painting,
drawing, sculpture and animation. Glaciers melt, and drip, towers, highways
and fences are built, and
brush strokes are outlined in graphite.
Drawing much of his inspiration from the drawings and schematics of the
great engineer, painter and
naturalist, Leonardo da Vinci, Campbell presents the viewer with a world
that is, at once, organic
and industrial. In the drawings most reminiscent of his engineering
schematic inspiration, haphazard
lines create complex arterial networks that could be highways, viruses or
both.
"Through the phenomenon of mark making, and erasure, the architectural
fantasies of the Renaissance
are applied at the corpuscular level," he said. "The epic scenes of composed
lines reference a Rube
Goldberg perspective of our built world, as well as the internal,
micro-landscape."
All-in-all, no matter what the medium or interpretation, Campbell's works
engage us in a tricky conversation
about how and where we live.
IMAGE
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Viveza Art Experience, 2604 Western Ave., presents "Arterial:
Organic Intersections of the New Cityscape." This evocative exhibit runs through Wednesday, February 21 to March 18, 2007 and offers a diverse collection of works by award-winning artist Christopher Santer, mixed-media artist Brian Scott Campbell and prolific painter Jeff Koegel. All three artists will be
in attendence at the opening reception from 6 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 23.
