Wall Painting at UTSA gallery

by Jennifer Jankauskas September 2, 2005

The artwork in Wall Painting assaults the viewer with a delightful array of color, from muted pastels to vibrant and intense hues.

Francesca Fuchs... Baby #1


The nine nationally recognized mid-career artists featured here create paintings that encompass varying characteristics: figurative versus abstract and minimal compositions juxtaposed with works that are replete with imagery. While stylistically different, they come together cohesively with the common dominator being that the artists have all have produced large scale ephemeral works, most of which are painted directly on the walls of the gallery.

Primarily about process and the idea of the transitory, this exhibition highlights contemporary artists who have reinterpreted one of the oldest known painting methods. The threads of wall painting can be traced from the first identified artworks in the caves of Lascaux, France through a rich history covering all geographic areas including Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Italian (Renaissance) frescoes, the Mexican murals from the 1920s, the murals of the 1930s created for the Federal Works Project in the United States and conceptual works from the late 1960s and early 1970s. While curator Frances Colpitt draws parallels between the artists in the exhibition and their historical predecessors in her accompanying catalogue essay, these works easily stand on their own without knowledge of its antecedents. What interested Colpitt in terms of contemporary wall paintings and shines through as one of the most compelling qualities about the exhibition is how each work “expresses the transience and quest of constant change and stimulation in secular culture today.” Each work is not only a reflection of contemporary society but directly relates to the prevailing issues of our times.

Exploring the thin line between various emotions Jane Callister’s multiple red-rimmed eyes with dripping blue tears is tinged with humor along with sorrow. The cartoon-like Jeepers Weepers with differing eye sizes and expressions is applied to the wall with a process of paint poured onto an adhesive backed vinyl sign film. More figurative then the artist’s earlier works. Callister is “interested in the way the work connects with the audience by having them interact with recognizable elements” and succeeds in this by simultaneously illustrating the contrasting emotions of elation and sadness in a familiar way.

Yunhee Min... Distance is Like the Future: SA


Francesca Fuchs also deals with the familiar. Her autobiographical mural-sized view of a breast-feeding baby, Baby #1 is executed in simple forms and light toned fleshy colors. Working from photographs Fuchs depicts a mother’s point of view as she looks down at her feeding baby. The color relationships and line work become the focus of the piece with the lack of detail and descriptive marks resulting in a somewhat abstracted painting. In the accompanying catalogue DVD, Fuchs states that this painting functions as somewhat of a feminist work and I agree. This is a tricky connotation, one that women artists often shy away from to avoid categorization of creating “feminine art” such as Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1974-79). Instead of disguising or avoiding this issue Fuchs tackles it head on, rising above what, in general, could be termed feminist subject matter, by creating a strong intimate image that speaks not only of the bond between parent and child in an unsentimental way but also about the process of painting itself.

Throughout the gallery, wall paintings cover almost every available surface even on a support column where Jim Osman has mixed pigment into compound using plastering tools to skim the plane and create multiple layers of textural forms. Based upon the idea of a common wall found between adjacent apartment buildings, Osman deconstructs shared spaces by alluding to remnants of architectural and personal effects in InsideOut. What is revealed, with decorative and structural shadows, is the history of a place. Osman’s effective use of collage along with a flattened and collapsed space simply and minimally depicts isolated portions of an old staircase, wood paneling, dresser drawers, bricks and pipes while mimicking fresco painting in technique. Nostalgic in tone, the artist’s use of a pale color palette consisting of yellow, pink, light green and blue are reminiscent of sun-faded elements (sofas, wallpaper) found in older homes. This integration of the chosen column with the subject matter of the work is a perfect marriage of form and content.

Aaron Parazette... Huge Monday


Yunhee Min’s Distance is Like the Future: SA a “floating wall” of five bands of rectangular color block panels in pink, red, olive, mauve and orange are very flatly rendered. What is most interesting is how the purity of the colors plays on each other; some vibrate as they jut up against each other while others have a sympathetic blending. Like the Color Field Painters, Min explores the perceptual effects of color in respect to architectural areas. By abandoning an apparent brushstroke and focusing on the spatial and emotional references the colors embody Min systematically attempts to reinterpret space by incorporating areas beyond the actual wall panels.

What happens in a desert landscape—a zero place? This question is at the core of Keith Sklar’s painting Situation. Exploring both a void and the conflux of compressed time and space is the premise for his brick-like wall work. Comprised of relief panels, Sklar is interested in the uniqueness of the painting process yet explores it in terms of other technologies including the computer and the cinema as seen in his format. By combining historical and allegorical references from various time eras, he collapses time without evoking any nostalgia. From a distance the work appears abstract in nature, upon approach several fighting figures emerge from the chaos along with an eruption of objects. Filled with restrained violence—reinforced by the technique of utilizing bright fluorescent colors mixed with muted pastels along with varying types of brushstrokes and paint applications—Sklar combines seemingly unrelated subjects as a commentary on the nomadic proclivity of our time.

Aaron Parazette’s Huge Monday combines what he calls his two great interests in his life: painting and surfing. Here the blue waves of color sweeping and swirling around the wall reference the perfect barrel wave. This simplified graphic representation revolves around the process and materiality of paint itself which Parazette explores by rendering very flat, hard-edged, bold geometric patterns. In this case, the artist used eight-foot balsa sticks to guide him in forming the large curves but, in essence, his application of paint is reminiscent of the way that surfboards are painted—with intense colors, hard-edged lines, and a flat surface that reveals no brushstrokes. These ribbons of pure color pull you in and spit you out while functioning as a minimal abstract work that is truly evocative of its subject—the rolling, spinning, unpredictable water.

Most closely aligned to mural painting in the traditional sense is Alex RubioEl Callejero. Perhaps this is because Rubio is very involved with his community and has produced many outdoor murals. Bringing this art form inside, Rubio, as with much of his work, deals with what is familiar to him by bringing to life various images from the west side of San Antonio. Here, the artist depicts a raspa truck as it drives through the barrio. The intense color palette and thick swirling paint correspond to the sweetness of the shaved ice cone and candy flavors. Rubio expresses his perspective of his particular neighborhood by utilizing what he terms iconic images and by bringing it into a university atmosphere he highlights the universality of the scene; crossing cultural boundaries, what is really addressed is a desire for simple pleasures.

Alex Rubio... El Callejero


Working in an opposing manner, Monique van Genderen’s minimal and abstract forms challenge illusionary perspective. With Wall Painting for UTSA the artist has recreated a piece originally made for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Loose looping geometric forms are created by materials co-opted from the design industry along with computer programs which the artist uses in a new, more amorphous way. This is in attempt to bring forth qualities of painting in much more structured materials. Van Genderen is successful with this endeavor as her use of clear paint with opalescent pigment in it creates surprising color shifts and changes depending on where the viewer stands. Utilizing both sides of a protruding wall, Van Genderen also plays with mirror images. On one side the abstracted shapes are executed in a range of peach, yellow, gray and burgundy tones while the inverse of the image is rendered in black and white on the other side of the wall. This twist, along with the delicate transparent layers, is an engaging exploration into architectural forms, the nature of reproduction and of materiality.

Lastly, providing a respite from the colorfully rendered artworks in the exhibition Bernard Brunon’s contribution That’s Painting, Extra White 07-27-5 comprises all of the open spaces between the other artists’ work painted with “Extra White” paint. Conceptually based and process oriented, the work could easily go unrecognized by the viewer; however, bringing to light this element of the exhibition was a complimentary video documenting Brunon’s workshop with UTSA students demonstrating how to prepare the walls for painting. Yet, elevating the artist’s professional business of house painting to a performative and conceptual artwork seems exist only as an inside joke. In his brochure That’s Painting Productions and in the catalogue text Brunon is compared to several other minimalist painters including Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt both of whom manipulate the medium in an optically expressive, yet extremely subtle way. Brunon’s house painting, while extremely skilled, does not equate to these other painters’ conceptual and material mastery. Furthering this argument is the video element which seemed almost tongue in cheek. If indeed, the artist’s intent is seeped in humor, he provides an interesting challenge to the seriousness of art historical dogma.

Wall Painting is Colpitt’s swan song to UTSA before assuming the role of Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History at Texas Christian University. Many of these works are strong in and of themselves yet Colpitt’s smart synthesis of these various pieces is one of the main elements that make Wall Painting so intriguing. The other, perhaps more importantly, is the ephemeral quality of the exhibition. As Robert Motherwell has said “Wherever art appears, life disappears,” and for a short time—the run of the exhibition–these works can transport the viewer into various other worlds. Yet soon life does reappear not only upon leaving the gallery, but as the works are removed and destroyed in the process. Like for those who experience any exciting exhibition, which are also ephemeral in its formation, Wall Painting continues to resonate, provoking questions about process, materiality, and transience or permanency.

Images courtesy UTSA and Frances Colpitt.

Jennifer Jankauskas is an independent curator and writer living in San Antonio.

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