In ancient China during the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols took over and the great artists of the time packed up and ran to the mountains to continue making great art. In the wake of journalistic trend and displacement from the main stream by a preponderance of hastily accepted and continually morphing experimental art forms, artists have packed up. They have gone on to follow their pleasure, follow their calling, in the precious little time they have, with a sense that their time would be best used making their art regardless of the status quo. Pleasure leads to order, and in art similarities can be drawn to physical performance. The baseball swing, or the golf swing that clicks perfectly...pleasure. The gifted athlete patterns and stores a library of right things that build up over time to an overwhelming force. The gifted artist follows the natural feedback system acquiring a vast pool of intuitive and technical information, instantly accessible to each new work. Endlessly refining but at any given moment...frozen, as great art. In exile, color, lust, imagination and unique vision has grown, and like spatterings of color against the massive pigment mountains in a Clyfford Still painting, the artists have re-emerged with new conviction armed with art created in their distant studios. In “Counterpoise” the artists have found many new voicings for new art.
Edward Avedisian displays a landscape from a unique overhead angle, green fields and a couple stealing away for an afternoon rendevous. The remarkable under-painting lights the scene with deep color.
Ronald Bladen’s early pigment painting titled “Japanese” is layered in silvery brown, a red protuberance penetrates the lower left of the painting, and minimal incursions from the edge recreate the drama and poetry of Bladen’s early form of minimalism.
Patricia Nolan’s painted photographic triptych places a beautiful nude female form in striking blue between two eerie inner city scenes. Spray painted Spanish dramatically clashes with the sky blue of Larry Deyab’s painting, “Creemos”.
Nicholas Maffei’s painting “Tangerine” juxtaposes a brilliant orange and iridescent surface over particleboard with thin red lines crossing the composition from outside its borders.
Larry Webb’s “Bird Bath” painting features lush color and form on canvas, with stark white cutouts that lead to an aquamarine violet shape.
Kathryn Butler’s “Commitment Blues” with its bold horizontal lines of gold, green gold, blue and staggered relationships of color, celebrates the wood and materiality as well as line and color.
Jungwook Grace Rim displays a large canvas of gentle cascading form, with yellows and a gently ebbing abstract dialogue between shapes of oils and acrylics in a serene field.
Richard Timperio shows a tempest of swirling thick hallucinogenic color, like rainbows in sand.
Jacques Roch’s small island canvas humorously depicts an island or phallic form flying off the canvas.
Katherine Parker's horizontal forms arm etched into the dark color of rich oil on canvas.
Sara Sterling’s complex photo borders on the abstract.
Robert Witz’s mysterious yet erotic painting of a young nude female in deep shade, being admired by an onlooker.
Paula DeLuccia’s heavily painted abstraction is thick and laden with knobs of pigment in an unsentimental geologic surface.
Eric Cockrell’s small rose-colored panel with a huddled group of figures seemingly insulated against the elements.
Chris Martin in thickly applied paint sets off a meandering yellow line seeking entry between long building like rectangles.
Larry Poons displays a penetrating canvas of forms and marks, in a highly energized search into the complex and magnificent language of the visual. The “Counterpoise” exhibition truly reveals the treasures of top notch visual artists expanding the envelope, pressing the fight, taking the evolution of American art to the next never ending level.