Matthew McConville - update

"Table Top Landscape"  about 5' wide

My apologies, but It's one of those weeks. Hopefully I'll do a regular post before it's over but in the mean time I thought I'd share this painting sent to me by Matthew McConville (whose work I posted on Nov. 16).

What I love about this is the direct dichotomy it represents with another group of his paintings (see below) which depict monumental scaled earthworks on small intimate canvases. In the piece above he represents a landform in miniature resting upon a table top but done on a fairly large scale. It's exactly the sort of thing that can make seeing art in real life so  rewarding. Here we can only imagine the different effects the variation in size might have. But conceptually, at the very least, it's a fun game of playing with scale and how that impacts the nature of representation.
http://matthewmcconville.com

"Steel Box"  2007  oil on panel  16" x 24"

Lekan Jeyifous

"Urban Growth Strategy 1"

"Central City Settlement"

"Craters"

"Hydro City Settlement"

"Outer City Settlement"

Lekan Jeyifous is a Nigerian born and Brooklyn based... um... architect? yes. Designer? sure. Artist. certainly. His work is much more far-ranging than what I've posted here. This is just the stuff that first appealed to me; work that integrates graphic novel/sci-fi aesthetics with the fascination of detailed charts, maps, blueprints and other technical visuals. In everything he does the presence of New York City, and Brooklyn especially, looms large. This is urban art with an urban message to an urban audience. The message? Well, maybe it goes something like this. "This place is seriously messed up. I wouldn't live anywhere else." He captures something of why the occupants of big cities feel this way: All the crowding and chaos, the slow decay at the margins and the dilapidated facades of industrial ruin somehow manage to co-exist alongside a thriving population ever ready to reinvent itself and its environment. There is an odd phenomenon that exists in the minds of city dwellers where even a dark dystopian vision of the future seems in some ways kind of exciting. In keeping with this sort of futurist mentality he keeps his media process mixed giving it a look both modern and aged. "The drawings presented here started out as digital images that were outputted, sketched and drawn over, and scanned back into the computer in order to be retraced, textured, and layered." All of which makes the images seem as if they were historical documents from some distant future relating to one less distant. You can see more work like this and plenty of other stuff on his website www.vigilism.com
I came across his work initially on the art networking site: bluecanvas.com

Nancy Loughlin 2

"Discord"  2011  oil on wood panel  55" x 40"

"Homestead"  2010  oil on wood panel  52" x 36"

"Playgrounds"  2011  oil on wood panel  42" x 36"

"The Go-Round"  2011   oil on pressed wood  30" x 36"

"The Lodge"  oil on wood panel  60" x 47.5"

I am more than a little bummed. Nancy Loughlin currently has a show up in Seattle at Linda Hodges Gallery. Just three hours away for me. And I had to head over that way to pick up some of my own work. But the only possible day I could go was on a Sunday and her gallery is not open on a Sunday. Why not? Why? I don't often get to see the work I post here in person. Seeing art first hand always makes an enormous difference. But sometimes the difference is greater than others. Ms. Loughlin's art seems of that sort. Her work is often large and always complex, subtle and delicately nuanced. Nonetheless I'm enthralled by even these small digital reproductions. Figures and creatures and all manner of imagery fade in and out of her paintings occupying scenes and symbols of domesticity and haunted by wildness and chaos.  She's exploring the hidden dimensions of our ordinary lives which create the illusions of order, and thinking about the ways in which we try to pretend that nature is out there, when all the time is is right here with us, and being affected by everything we do.
You can see loads of work on her website: www.nancyloughlin.com

(The Show close this Saturday on the 26th so if you happen to be in Seattle, go see it this week!)

Matthew McConville

"Excavation"  oil on panel  12" x 14"  2007

"Iceberg"  oil on panel  16" x 20"  2007

"Ramp"  oil on panel  16" x 22"  2007

"Un-natural Bridge" oil on panel  16" x 14"  2007

"Waterfall"  oil on panel  16" x 24"  2007

Matthew McConville's work ranges over a variety of themes and subject matter from straightforward landscape painting to allegorical figurative works, to installation projects and digital drawings of hair (?!). All of it is thoughtfully engaged in historical perspectives and his statements concerning each of his projects is well worth reading (something I don't get to say very often about artist statements). But what initially caught and held my attention was these depictions of imaginary large scale earth art. He describes his approach as combining the visual style of the Hudson River school of painters (Church, Cole, etc.,) and the Earthwork artists of the mid to late 20th century. His short essay on these called "Earthworks 2007" is especially good. Interestingly, given the monumentality of both the images and the historical references, the actual paintings are quite small, only 16" tall or smaller, which in the real world creates a a very different interaction with the viewer. While I think the paintings would work wonderfully very large, there's something both intriguing and playful (dare I say, ironic?) in this more intimate and personal scale. The artist is asking us to imagine the monumental instead of trying to convey it directly. Most of us will never see Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson (due to it being constructed during a time of drought it has spent most of it's history since 1970 submerged) or other famous earth art projects. We have to be content with documentation and our imaginations. In the same way, I have never seen most of the art I post on this blog. Mr. McConville seems to be saying (comfortingly I think) that, while this is certainly not be the same, it may be enough.
You can look through the rest of his work on his website: matthewmcconville.com
I stumbled across his work here: www.levygallery.com