Selected Reviews
Chicago in Review
Arts Magazine, January 1991
- Kathryn Hixson
|
Betsy Rosenfield Gallery, Chicago
The positioning of the artist’s self, within the artwork, continues to carry a disputed significance in the hands of younger artists. From attempts to totally eradicate it in favor of givens, or chance operations, to an open embrace of the narcissistic gesture, various strategies must self-consciously acknowledge the placement of the maker. Trends in appropriation of techniques and images demonstrate the complexity of this task. Andrew Young has embraced the technical vocabulary of the art-historically laden medium of egg tempera in his glowing still-life paintings-on-panels at Betsy Rosenfield (October 6—November 3). Mastering this delicate method of representation, Young can easily align himself with the Great Tradition while clearly elucidating the elements of artifice that coalesce to conjure up a romantic nostalgia for historically validated beauty. The multi- layered surfaces of the paintings carry painterly gestures suggestive of flowers in vases and pretty little birds in shallow, warm, interior spaces. Young carefully composes the pictures with geometric linear elements that appear to be details of furniture design or allude to sumptuous frames. Most compellingly, the tempera is “badly” cracked and weathered (a conservator’s readymade nightmare) revealing the stratum of colored skins beneath the surface, a notation of old age that serves to, in a sweep, declare the works high value in its proud bearing of the marks of a seemingly protracted history of survival. |
Bureau Chief, 1990
Egg tempera on wood panel, 28 x 23 in. |
Roost, 1990
Egg tempera on wood panel, 13.5 x 11.5 in. |
Young graciously offers this visceral experience—usually available only in museums and holy places—and then denies its pleasure by defacing his surfaces with random drips, stains, and gouges that serve to self-vandalize any easy reading. This is not a flagellant pessimism that denies the possibility of originality, but rather a candid exposition of the process wherein details of depiction can be and are simply details of an abstract art object. Though occasionally too air-tight in their overbearing beauty, Young’s painting succeed in begging the question concerning the possibility of an “aesthetic experience” within a self-deconstructive vocabulary. The self lies on the defaced surface of painting, which may suffer under the weight of its history, but still offers a possibility for a sensual communication that invites a viewer to bodily engagement. A paramedic of painting, Young resuscitates and fuels the desire to mediate between a fascination with or hope for a sublime with the particularities of the reasoned, the material.
|