DAVID GIBSON WRITING

The nature of abstraction is that it diverges from a representation of the natural world in order to achieve its aims. It may begin with the real—with what we accept as a real object, event, or fact, and then break down into constituent parts that in themselves hold as much realistic value as the quarks that make up all matter, but for whom we can ascribe no specific appearance. The distance between an object and its portrayal in art is a degree of abstraction, and likewise the distance between knowledge and experience is also abstraction. In the new series of paintings by Carter Hodgkin, we are presented with an abstract aesthetic borrowed from a sphere of encounter not belonging to everyday life. Hodgkin likes to mine real localities that result in forms that she can pick depending upon their rate of natural occurrence, their material state, and their usefulness to us as facts. Hodgkin refers to the designs in her paintings as referencing “cosmic collisions,” in which a lo

Copyright Little Brown and Company 1991 This column focuses upon those books that have had a role in developing how we think about the world. In my particular experience they tend to be novels, with a book of poems or nonfiction work on intellectual history thrown in. But by and large I have lived my ‘life of the mind’ through Fiction—a misnomer if there ever were one. What this implies is that I prefer fantasy to reality. Rather, I find more reality in what are essentially stories, than I do in factual accounts, because a novel involves a degree of artifice, whereas a newspapers or history books present facts, but mask their intentions by what they specifically say. The novel speaks about the world; about the minds of men and women, children, sometimes animals; about landscape and climate; history and memory; while at the same time also presenting facts and poetry in the service of truth.     Each novel has in turn its own truth, characterized by the author’s

The contemporary artist, given a particular education and overall attitude toward what is considered historically important today, may struggle to communicate in terms that challenge them formally while at the same time addressing the need for a creative language. They may find themselves reacting to the scene overall or to specific artists who are lauded as the paradigmatic models for ‘quality’. In this situation, one expects to compete not for a position of mastery, or to produce a new generational legacy, but only to hold onto whatever degree of notoriety is bestowed upon them. Although genius is still a prized quality, it has become a quantifiable commodity, and not the ambiguous measure of idiosyncrasy that it once was. It becomes necessary for the artist of vision to look back upon art history for cues as to how to express oneself. In the case of Daniel Sewell, he chose Cubism as a creative language to reinvigorate a contemporary dialogue on form, esthetics, and the uses o

The photographs of Hrvoje Slovenc are partly molded by his immigration from Croatia to the United States and the accumulated social attitudes from an outsider’s perspective, as they also are by the formal models of Yale mentors Gregory Crewdson and Philip Lorca diCorcia. A master’s degree in biochemistry from The University of Zagreb in 2000 prior to emigrating here to pursue a passion for photography perhaps led him to exactly the sort of understated link between appearances and relationships and the social attitudes that underlie them, codifying and commingling the degree of meaning that is unseen except after long study.  Untitled IV (Tea Party), 30 x 97 inches “Home Theater” presents a series of photographic narratives with its characters mainly absent. The spaces are charged with an off-stage dramaturgy that is revealed as the daily and ritualistic practice of S&M. The role-playing becomes more important than the terminology as we are made to understand that the setti

Like abandoned totem poles, the woodbased sculptures that comprise Jason Middlebrook’s first solo exhibition at Dodge mostly lean against the broad white walls like the planks that they are. He turns a simply serviceable object into an example of nature as a source for abstract form, marrying its original silhouette and texture to a series of colorful and evocative markings that accrue the potential for esthetic enjoyment. In Once again a version of nature through my eyes (2011), Middlebrook turns a randomly selected silhouette into a metaphorical rendition on the nature of wood. In its simplicity of line and its denial of illustration it brought to mind the early white-and-black line paintings of Frank Stella; but there is a visual heaviness in the raw surface. A plank becomes a seismic map of time as recorded in the pulp of the wood itself. Vertical Landscape Painting (2011) possesses a certain feminine grace as it reaches gracefully from root to branches from whi

The installations of Michael Zansky achieve a high degree of empirical encounter that combine paradox and spectacle with an air toward transcendence. “American Panopticon" at The Hampden Gallery of The University of Massachusetts in Amherst presents the karmic transgressions a of a popular sports figure as a rumination on the shortcomings of hero worship, presenting a vivid and macabre scenario combining dramaturgy and totemism into a metaphor that questions the very fate of the soul.       The person’s name in the title of this artwork was a popular sports figure, a quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons football team, who was tried and convicted of running a corporation of kennels that were a front for the criminal enterprise of running dog fight clubs. As a sports figure, a success story in his own right, it was not only ethically negligent for him to be involved in such a venture, but it was also a betrayal of the values that contribute to our appreciation o