“Summer Rainbow” Exhibition

“Summer Rainbow” Exhibition

Van Der Plas Gallery

This event has ended.

*Summer is fleeing, and we’re not ready to see it go. One of its constant spectacles has been
rain—enough to generate flood warnings, wash out roads, and topple trees onto power lines.
We’re here to report a rainbow. The newest paintings in the gallery, gathered from our most recent All
Art + Open Call, are a refreshing reminder that artists don’t respect the weather. Many of the new
offerings are crisp and cool, with some otherworldly visitations in the shape of water, or sand, or
mysterious beings.

Barbara Kolo’s “Vivacity,” a 24” x 24” acrylic painting, presents a strangely dissolving white square in
the middle of a black ground. It looks a little like a ballistics test, with the object having been
penetrated by rain instead of a projectile from a gun. “Vivacity” seems to be trying to race away from
the wall—always an exciting characteristic for a painting of that size. In a similar vein, Mia Gjerdrum
Helgesen’s diptych, “City Lights,” forms a twenty-four-inch square interrupted by architectural shapes
and reflections. This painting replicates the feeling of a ride on an escalator that’s going faster than
normal, blurring the features of a bank of windows, a system of railings and doors, and a vast interior
space.

Anthony Mosca’s paintings are a fine treat, muscular and brooding, and thankfully, they’re big enough
to show off the artist’s confident brushwork. “Venezia” and “Wilderness” have a slashing Franz
Kline-like sense of shape, while “Istanbul” uses a little Mondriaan trick, à la “Pier and Ocean”: playing
with the viewer’s ability to perceive a scene when the horizon and other giveaways have been
removed.

“I Fall In Love Too Easily” may seem at first like an embarrassing confession, but in reality it’s the title
to a song written by Sammy Cahn and popularized by at least a dozen jazz musicians, including Chet
Baker. It seems obvious that the artist, David Jones, is aware of its history, because this small (9” x
12”) gem of an acrylic painting pulsates with a feeling of freedom and improvisation. It’ll play nicely,
perhaps with a touch of mischief, with Linda Bachammar Clerget’s “Disparition,” a collage containing
newspaper clippings, loops of black paint, silhouettes, a woman’s face, and a meandering series of
pink splotches. It’s gratifying, in fact, to see the quality of abstraction in many entrants in this show.
Zoe McGuire’s “Solitude,” 14” x 18,” offers a tempting pink smear in its center that suggests
someone—a mermaid? A nude model?—falling backward in front of a mirror. Then there’s Yumiko
Shimada’s “Genius Loci: Layer,” a petite (7.5” x 10.6”) bas relief of blue, pondlike shapes etched into
a rough yellow surface, digging into the imagination like water through a stone.

A certain lighthearted strangeness percolate through other parts of the show. Federica Rodella’s
“Pets” depicts two little girls apparently on vacation waving their scares at a big, ugly prehistoric fish
that appears to be a coelacanth: some pet. For fans of irony and dark humor, Rodella is definitely one
to watch: “The Poet,” apparently composed during some dyspeptic nightmare under the influence of
László Moholy-Nagy, features two beachgoers playing tetherball with an assortment of alarmingly
out-of-scale objects.

If only our carefree days didn’t have to leave so soon.

Media

• Painting

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