Crows, ghosts and the urban view at Neptune Gallery
by Claudia Rousseau
The Gazette
December 10, 2008
An exceptional exhibit of recent paintings by John Aquilino is at Neptune Gallery in Bethesda. Another show of interest, this at the Gaithersburg Arts Barn, features new paintings by Shelly Voorhees, crow sculptures by Mark Behme and small works on paper by colored pencil artist Betty Hafner.
Aquilino's luminous cityscapes are absolutely perfect in the Bethesda gallery. The show's title, "Another Level," is appropriate enough - a new level of work, new larger format, and, of course, located on the second floor in Neptune's new space.
Of the many qualities that attract the viewer in these works, Aquilino's use of color and his objective bird's eye view have to top the list. Based on daredevil digital architectural photographs taken in a much widened repertoire of cities, Aquilino transforms his source material into paintings by making drawings that eliminate detail and human presence, then transfers these to his canvases. The painting process transforms them further by the application of arbitrary colors, often related to the original tones, but with no interest in merely reproducing them. In photos, the surfaces look smooth and flat; in reality, they are livened with traces of the brush within the carefully delineated forms.
Aquilino is also a master of light, as in a painting like "No Parking" in which the angled sunlight falls sharply on the garage walls. These harsh contrasts of light and shadow are reminiscent of Edward Hopper, or even more of Charles Sheeler in the 1920s and '30s; the two are important 20th century American precedents for Aquilino's style. Like Hopper and Sheeler, realism is tempered with an abstract sensibility to underlying form, and a tendency toward simplification and reduction to emphasize the juxtaposition of shape and color. Hopper often included the human figure, bringing a sense of narrative into his work. Although Sheeler's cityscapes and paintings of factories eliminated the figure, there was always a hidden discourse about progress in them. It is this narrative element Aquilino seems to reject.
Despite this difference, something about these empty but colored cityscapes tantalizes us to think that "another level" of meaning is hidden here. A painting like "Dome" or "Monsters on the Roof" captures the imagination. Lured into its fictive space, the viewer tries to imagine moving through its shallow perspective, which brings him back to work out the urban puzzle of interrelated forms on the surface.
Wood sculptor Mark Behme explores another aspect of city life: the presence, or absence, of crows. The black crow has been a central image for Behme since 1990 when he began a friendship with an injured crow in his Silver Spring neighborhood. In caring for her, he came to realize how extraordinary crows are and why they figure so prominently in so many myths and stories. Possibly the most intelligent of all birds, they appear capable of memory and recognition.
Something of a retrospective, the show includes work from the early '90s when Behme was making objects that deliberately crossed the boundaries between fine art and craft. "Raven Lights" is a wood floor lamp in the Arts and Crafts style of the early 20th century.
The arrival of the West Nile virus in 1999 was catastrophic for crows on the East Coast. "West Nile" is comprised of a dyed wood hand of carved black feathers and a small oil painting of clouds and sky. A cutout in the hand/wing in the shape of a flying crow shows an empty sky, alluding, sadly, to the sudden demise of the crows.
In a small recent work, "Oracle of a Kiss, an Offering and a Prayer," a crow's head unpacks into three parts: two faces, two open hands with a coin, and the base. The work seems to evoke American Indian myth, and even style, as well as the ancient custom of putting a coin on the eyes or in the mouth of the dead so they can be carried across to the land of the immortals. Rich aniline dyes and exquisite carving characterize "Hearing Aid" that features a carved shell, a reddish ear/clam, and a crow skull like a spirit/pearl on top. The whole is a conceptual work about hearing and listening.
Shelly Voorhees' three works are, like Aquilino's, in a new large format. Evolved from her work of the past few years that showed multimedia layering in rich colors and historic-looking figures in a mysterious atmosphere, these continue to explore that effect. Predominantly in grays and blacks, there are shades of color beneath the surface. Voorhees uses clear resin, acrylic and inks to layer the media to work almost like Renaissance oil glazes, that is, the translucency permits light to enter the surface, creating a nearly palpable illusion of space behind the picture plane. Each of the three untitled works portrays a female figure, two full-length and one a bust. Each face bears a certain resemblance to the artist's own, but as though of some ancestor, some ghost of the past emerging into the present. Recalling Bergman's existential content, these are profoundly moving, haunting works. The way they are painted allows an unexpected illusion of movement, almost magical, like a bit of film seen out of the corner of the eye.