 |
| Wheel Of Fortune, 1997 Oil on enamel on canvas, 28 x 28 inches |
My
initial inspiration for this blog was the term "terminal
velocity" in which an object moving fast enough transcends their current
physical state, altering the very chemical composition of their existence. When
I was a boy, before I became interested in literature, I was for a time
fascinated with comic books, with the combination of the visual, the narrative,
and the fantastic that resides in them. I read both Marvel Comics and DC Comics, which is to say that I liked both the new and the old. One of my favorite heroes among the old guard was The Flash. His power was speed.
I
met Essenhigh in the late 1990s when she had recently completed her MFA in Fine
Arts and was having the initial success of her artistic career. There was a lot
of talk about her, not only as talented and idiosyncratic, but as a
representative figure for the era itself. Her work provided an exemplary model
for how figuration could be both reconsidered and reshaped.
The middle to late Nineties in New York City was as a period fervent with new creativity. Essenhigh was one of the most highly featured artists, with articles appearing not only in high-end art magazines like Bomb and Flash Art but also mainstream publications such as Interview, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. She graduated from one gallery to another, achieving star status. But really what this meant for the average viewer, even someone vested in art world ways and means, was that her work would constantly be viewed in new and different contexts, and not commingled with the vision or of each successive gallery. It became her work that was important, not the venue, and when next I heard about her upcoming exhibition, it was always matched by a degree of anticipation and even anxiety of how it was to be newly perceived.
I luckily attended one of Essenhigh's earliest exhibitions at La Mama
La Galleria in 1997. My editor at Cover Magazine brought me with him, as he often did in those days, introducing me to venues, and developing my role as an art writer. This exhibition was
called "Wallpaper Paintings" and it presented her signature surreal
bodies as synchronically placed images in a blank and highly colored void. I was immediately attracted to these forms but without knowing why. They seemed like human figures, but only elliptically so, like the anthropomorphic forms that originated in the work of Yves Tanguy or Joan Miro. They were gestural and dramaturgical. Essenhigh had basically created one form for each painting and had repeated it in a spaced out and gridded fashion, over broad expanses of mustard yellow or baby blue. It was difficult to discern any clear narrative, though I kept looking for one. This was to come later.
The next time I saw her work was in "Recent Paintings" at Stefan Stux Gallery, and soon afterwards, in The Aldrich Museum's "Pop Surrealism." With each exhibition the visual language became more distinct, larger, and more detailed, and I began to see where it was going.There was an attempt to place the suggestive bodies within social context, whether domestic or business oriented. Here was all of society reduced to gestures, with the characters reduced to soft flesh, interacting with one another to fill the void that is life. It was touching, dramaturgical, and impressive. It was both timeless and new in art. The gestures were taken from the ordinary, like the drawings from which paintings like Millet's "The Gleaners" or Degas' dancers or bathers were made.
Comments