That's probably the influence of David Ruhlman's work. The piece above is The Fox sisters receive the first 12 letters, and is fairly representative of the general tone and feel of the paintings he presented for the show. He mentioned that he became interested in the Fox sisters and their contribution to the development of the American spiritualist movement. His paintings seemed to touch on mystery and its relationship to spiritual awakening, but also incorporated letter-forms as an aesthetic device. His letter grids encourage you to see a word, then bounce to another, then back again, just as gestalt images like the face-vase encourage you to bounce between images.
Several of the paintings are also sculptural, which not only allows, but actually encourages you to view them from multiple angles. At one point I had a strong desire to crawl on the floor to see if there was painted material that I couldn't see standing up or crouching. In the culture of the gallery space and the universal survey museum that sometimes zombifies us into viewing work in one way from one angle, this, I feel, is quite an accomplishment.
I'm more familiar with Peter's work, which is significantly different on the surface. Peter self-identifies as a photographer, and I think it's fair to put him in the more conceptual camp of that medium. His work at this show varies greatly. I saw crisp, black-and-white photographs formally reminiscent of the golden age of black and white photography, but taken of the everyday sawhorse. The black mirror and the black hole are repeating motifs that show up in Peter's work quite a bit, and this show is no exception. Probably the most striking piece of the whole exhibition is Infinite Field IV, a large, table-like structure of Plexiglas held up by two very different sawhorses, with a black glass in the center. The unnatural curvature of the table makes it feel as though it's about to burst, and the black glass serves as an implied mirror for the sawhorses.
It's the theme of this piece that binds the show together, I think. Though the metaphor of the incomplete puzzle makes sense for David's work, and clearly influences Peter's, a better and more well-rounded metaphor might be the imperfect mirror. Most pieces in the show can be viewed as a distorted reflection. Some, like the table with unique sawhorses, reflect themselves. Some reflect other works in the show, as when David titles two different pieces exactly the same. Many reflect your own expectation, such as when we're forced to view what we know to be a flickering light through a black glass, or when we search for words that aren't there in a letter grid.
The imperfect reflection and the black mirror make me think of the modern LCD/LED screen. I've never known either artist to work with technology as a theme, and in Peter's case he sometimes seems to work against it by creating handmade books and photographing natural spaces, but I'd be interested to see what their artistic sensibilities would make of the ubiquitous nature of modern technology.
But I digress. The show comes highly recommended, and I haven't touched on half of what's to be found there after a careful examination. Infinite Field is open through March 5 at Gallery St. Germain, which is located at 912 W St. Germain in St. Cloud. For further questions, the artists can be contacted through their websites, linked in the first paragraph of this article, and Gallery St. Germain can be contacted at studio@paramountarts.org.
Several of the paintings are also sculptural, which not only allows, but actually encourages you to view them from multiple angles. At one point I had a strong desire to crawl on the floor to see if there was painted material that I couldn't see standing up or crouching. In the culture of the gallery space and the universal survey museum that sometimes zombifies us into viewing work in one way from one angle, this, I feel, is quite an accomplishment.
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| Work from another show that's quite similar to the work presented at Infinite Field |
It's the theme of this piece that binds the show together, I think. Though the metaphor of the incomplete puzzle makes sense for David's work, and clearly influences Peter's, a better and more well-rounded metaphor might be the imperfect mirror. Most pieces in the show can be viewed as a distorted reflection. Some, like the table with unique sawhorses, reflect themselves. Some reflect other works in the show, as when David titles two different pieces exactly the same. Many reflect your own expectation, such as when we're forced to view what we know to be a flickering light through a black glass, or when we search for words that aren't there in a letter grid.
The imperfect reflection and the black mirror make me think of the modern LCD/LED screen. I've never known either artist to work with technology as a theme, and in Peter's case he sometimes seems to work against it by creating handmade books and photographing natural spaces, but I'd be interested to see what their artistic sensibilities would make of the ubiquitous nature of modern technology.
But I digress. The show comes highly recommended, and I haven't touched on half of what's to be found there after a careful examination. Infinite Field is open through March 5 at Gallery St. Germain, which is located at 912 W St. Germain in St. Cloud. For further questions, the artists can be contacted through their websites, linked in the first paragraph of this article, and Gallery St. Germain can be contacted at studio@paramountarts.org.
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