Finding a vision in a crowd

BOBBIE ALLEN

The experience of browsing through art galleries can be an acquired

taste, and it’s not for everyone. Unlike the serene privacy an art

fan experiences in a museum, strolling luxuriantly from wall to wall

seeking only aesthetic pleasure, art galleries are places of

commerce. Art dealers are an eclectic breed, but they all share the

need to make sales in order to survive.

When you walk into a gallery you get an immediate sense of how

much commitment or risk the owner is taking with a particular artist.

(Some artists, of course, shun the dealer entirely and open their own

galleries or enter co-ops.) Is the gallery filled with the work of a

single artist? Those dealers are the bravest -- the income for this

gallery depends upon the public taste for this single artistic voice.

But for the art browser, walking into a gallery where only one or

two artists are on view can be a very exciting. This isn’t shopping

for a sofa. With enough freedom to stroll and take the art in, you

can get a sense of the artist’s style, what his or her influences

are, even how the artist has evolved or views the world around us.

This can be an exceedingly rich experience, even life-changing.

However, exhibiting multiple artists in a gallery is the safer

path, ensuring the widest appeal to a variety of tastes that often

edges into kitsch (actually, sometimes, downright leaping into

kitsch). And the experience of viewing art in these galleries is

entirely different, more like shopping for that sofa. There are fewer

works by any given artist, perhaps only one or two pieces. Works are

often crowded together, stacked on top of other non-complimentary

work, poorly lighted or placed in awkward places in the room.

Laguna has its fair share of these galleries. But occasionally,

taking a chance in these crammed showrooms, you can find something

that slows your pace and demands your attention.

When I saw the work of Jamie Perry (Sherwood Gallery, Inc., 460 S.

Coast Hwy.), I stopped at once. Placed all together on one wall of

the gallery is a group of canvases that, ironically, seem to be

demanding space. They are all quiet depictions of empty landscapes in

muted gray-blue ranges. If it weren’t for the careful depiction of

light these works might even seem bleak.

“Meander” (38x38, acrylic on canvas) is composed mostly of sky.

There are ragged, full clouds that partially reveal a peculiar

green-tinted blue sky that often precedes rain. Indeed, the air

itself seems tinted this shade, a masterful bit of realism.

But the landscape, taking up only the very bottom of the canvas,

is a perfectly curving river, so flat and silvery it could be made of

mercury instead of water. Exquisitely placed cypress-like trees dot

each curve. The surface of the painting has the glossy brushlessness

of acrylic paint, and the composition seems utterly still,

contrasting sharply with the idea of “meandering” -- slow, curving

movement. The effect is perfectly static, an imaginary landscape

conveying a filled emptiness.

Although Perry lists Wyeth as one of his influences, the extreme

static quality seems to share more with Rene Magritte. “The Smell of

Rain” (acrylic on board, 16x39) is an elongated composition that

centers on a lighter area surrounding a white frame house. The clouds

have moved in, thinning briefly just over the dull red roof, white

walls and straight green curtains. The rooms inside are black and

empty. A faint green patch suggests grass, as if watered only in the

circle of a sprinkler.

But the scattered trees surrounding the house are even more gray

than the clouds. Surreally, they lean in the wind, blurred, as if

caught in a photograph. This strange movement is frozen in the stormy

air, and the effect is almost disturbing. There is something

quintessentially American about the open space of Perry’s landscapes,

but the still loneliness of this house seems to highlight the

isolation of individual, as if the house were a living being, unmoved

and unmoving in the storm.

These works stand in weird contrast to a collection of funky

ceramic teapots scattered on a table below them, displayed for sale.

Off to the right a cluster of huge, brightly colored and highly

dimensional metal sculptures hang in gaudy heft on the wall. This

seems only to accentuate the still world of Perry’s vision, and it is

utterly distracting.

Perry’s ironically titled “The House on the Right” (acrylic on

board, 16x50) expresses such loneliness that I began to see it,

standing in the middle of a cluttered and busy commercial gallery, as

a potent statement on the reductivism of the American dream. The same

red-roofed house sits in a cloud break so bright is seems more like a

stage light. There is nothing all around. Two tire ruts lead straight

past the house (on the left), without veering toward it, passing it

by. I wondered at this, so utterly at odds with the gallery around

me.

Such moments in art galleries make you appreciate all the more the

risk art dealers must take when they exhibit only a few artists, and

the dealer that manages to create an atmosphere in the gallery that

encourages leisurely viewing of single works can seem like a hero.

Vincent van Gogh’s brother, Theo, himself an art dealer, amassed a

collection of his brother’s paintings simply because no one would buy

them. “I am sure he will be understood later on,” he steadfastly

said, “it is just hard to say when.”

These became, a generation later, the great Van Gogh museum in

Amsterdam, one of the world’s best galleries, where the vision of a

single artist is allowed the space to speak in delicious isolation.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She teaches writing at the UC Irvine.