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Artist takes abstract look at biology
Kurt Shaw covers the art scene for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached via e-mail.
The landscapes are oil paintings by Gina Tamburri, and the figures are drawings by Eric Dickman.
Although Tamburri's paintings might look like lunar landscapes, the subject is more akin to something found in a bug's back yard.
"Since I started painting seriously at school, I've been very much involved with and enamored by microscopic imagery, cellular structures - all the natural forms that are in nature and everywhere around us," she says.
Tamburri graduated from the University of Delaware in the summer of 2000 with a bachelor's degree in fine art, so her fascination with biology is a bit of a surprise. But, lest you think these are textbook examples, a closer look is required - really close.
Yes, Tamburri uses textbook images of her subjects as a reference, but she says, "When I look at an image that I reference, I focus in on the specific part of it that seems more interesting to me."
The result is closely cropped, abstracted views of very real subjects. As in "Sporophore," a painting of mushroom spores, or in "Airway," where she has painted an internal view of a rabbit's lung. And because the images she references are often in black and white, she paints them in her own inventive palette of Hello Kitty colors that further emphasizes their abstract qualities.
Sometimes she layers unrelated imagery, resulting in even more abstract compositions. In "Fig. 12-7. Many Organisms Have High Reproductive Rates," she combines painted images of tadpole eggs, pine needles and invented biomorphic shapes.
"I definitely abstract them, combine them and do different things with them in the paintings," she says. In that way, "they become more than just what they were referenced from."
Not all of the imagery is microscopic. In "Untitled No. 14," what looks like Q-tips growing in the wild is actually an upside-down view of dripping cave slime. "I loved the forms of the drips and the way that they look," Tamburri says.
"Untitled No. 14" is not painted in her usual, unusual palette. "It's so rare that I use colors that are that soft," she says of the overwhelmingly tan and beige piece. But that softness works, especially when combined with the black, hard-edged negative space in the composition. The black space becomes ground that crackles with organic disruptions that, because of the upside-down viewpoint, become landscape, although totally unrecognizable.
In some works, her science-inspired paintings become science fiction. She admits that two small paintings, "Nova" and "Root Structure," are imaginary compositions, though based on her biological interests.
"Those are just completely invented," she says. "I get these accumulated references in my head and spit out new things every once in a while that I did not see directly, but come from many different things that I had looked at."
They are acceptable transgressions. Although "Nova" looks like a painting of hot orange seedpods shooting death rays, the piece is nowhere near hokey. Similarly, in "Root Structure," orange-yellow orbs move through chunky, ginseng-like roots like Oompa Loompas hiking through rough terrain, but they could just as easily be seen as megaspores by the horticulturally minded.
When James Church, owner of Penn Gallery, offered Tamburri this exhibition, he gave her the option of including other artists. So why pick Dickman as her running mate in this show? She says it is because there is an organic connection in their work.
Like Tamburri, Dickman also is in his mid-20s. But as an artist, he has a long way to go to catch up to Tamburri. In this show, he displays "blind contour drawings." Not his description, mind you, but a general description for what is basically an academic exercise whereby students draw a live model without looking down at the paper for the purpose of developing hand-eye coordination. The results always come out quirky, even humorous, no matter who draws them.
For an artist, publicly displaying these blind contour drawings is a bit like hanging your underwear out to dry on the Jumbotron at PNC Park. It is just something most artists would not even contemplate, even though just about everyone who ever made these drawings thinks they are totally cool.
Should we even consider them worth the look? Technically, no. After all, Dickman is still a student in studio arts at Pitt and has way too many options to explore before he lands on his "thing." But, in fairness, they are fun and organic.
| 'Naked Vegetation' |
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