NYAB Event - Ed Rath " Under the Influence New Paintings"

Ed Rath " Under the Influence New Paintings"

M55 Art

This event has ended.

In his latest acrylic paintings on view at M55Art, Brooklyn Artist Ed Rath looks at the many influences that inspire him to paint the images that he paints. Although most of his iconography originates from very personal sources, e.g. dreams and childhood memories, many of his pictorial structures have evolved from looking at the work of other artists. In this show, we see parodies of several well known works. In “After Gericault” Rath attempts to make his own statement based on his long obsession with Gericault’s masterpiece, “The Raft of the Medusa”. Substituting his animated trees for Gericault’s human figures, Rath’s version of this ship wreck rescue tragedy at first may appear humorous. On further investigation the viewer may notice that even lowly caricatures have the ability to evoke empathy and compassion. Through their simplicity and directness these images transcend their literalness. Endowed with gestural components observed in Gericault’s figures, Rath strips his trees of all idealized beauty, delivering the message of human suffering through the brittle poses that dead trees express so well.
Rath also uses his animated trees to reenact the narratives in Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” The substitution of trees for the human figures again creates a humorous effect. The decapitated tree representing Homer stares outward like a vacant mask, while the intently staring tree representing Aristotle captures the introspective pose of Rembrandt’s figure without the pomp and material symbolism that Rembrandt uses to portray his noble subject.

In Rath’s version of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, two trees lie under a blanket staring skyward. The beauty of the stars can only be imagined however because the scene is pictured from above, leaving no horizon line from which to view the starry heavens. In “Basement Room”, Rath parodies “Van Gogh’s Room”, with a rendition of a simple bare bones room that many artists can still relate to.
The show also includes several works of imagination, including scenes of animated trees earnestly and foolishly acting out a tragicomic repertoire of human dramas.