|
• Cover
• News | blog
• Music | blog
• Lazy I
• Film | blog
• Theater | blog
• Art | blog
• Sports
• Lifestyle | blog
• Dish | blog
• Books | blog
• Culture
• 8 Days
• Heartland Healing
• Hoodoo Blues
• MoJoPo
• News of the Weird
• Television
• Letters
|
|
|
Home - Culture
|
One Man's Treasure
|
Vargas’ SUPERNOVA christens new Anderson O’Brien Old Market
by Michael J. Krainak
Artist Bart Vargas called his first solo show in Omaha in 2007 One Man’s Trash, an impressive array of mixed media, sculpture and installation at the “old” Bemis Underground. It was an auspicious beginning for this trash man, a collector and scavenger of our throwaway culture who repurposes his loot into fine art.
Vargas again bursts upon Omaha’s art scene with his new solo show, SUPERNOVA, which could easily be called One Man’s Treasure. Gone are the installations of trash and more obvious sculptures and assemblages of computer keys, cables, beer and pop bottles with their waste not-want not cautionary tale that characterized his Underground exhibit.
Instead, SUPERNOVA features more than 200 abstract paintings and one sculpture that eschew Vargas’ rougher, edgier approach to his signature themes and rely instead on a more colorful, ambiguous style. It is fitting that Vargas’ more sophisticated, mature work be the inaugural exhibit for the Anderson O’Brien Fine Art Gallery which opened last weekend in its new additional space in the Old Market, formerly Jackson Artworks.
There is legitimate concern in the arts community that with the closing of Pulp Gallery last year and now JAW, Omaha has lost another private venue devoted to showing and encouraging emerging artists and experimental work, especially in downtown’s alternative spaces. As unfortunate as this is, there is no reason to believe Anderson O’Brien “East,” a gallery devoted to its stable of represented artists, is going to fill that gap.
As such, owner Jo Anderson and her staff offered a festive opening to the renovated space at 1108 Jackson St., no longer an L-shaped gallery, but instead a U-shape which flows around the front desk that includes a large showroom for current exhibits, back and side galleries for AOB artists and a front area for fine art jewelry and textiles. Overall the gallery is sophisticated, welcoming and urbane. Whether Anderson O’Brien intends to exhibit and promote edgy, contemporary art on a regular basis remains to be seen.
SUPERNOVA does have a contemporary look to it, if not as overtly experimental as earlier work, but it continues Vargas’ global concerns with the environment and other energy issues. A sure sign of his progress is his recent selection among 80 American artists to be exhibited in the 2010 Beijing International Art Biennale. Vargas is currently a master of fine art candidate at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Though Vargas has been branded in the past as an eco-artist, the message is subtler here and more conceptual as his work is interpreted through a developing interest in mathematics that influences his aesthetic. Though there is no mention of this in the show’s statement, Vargas is adamant about its influence in his life and work.
“Math is the most consistent form of language we have worldwide,” he said. “Geometry has always been my most favorite, because I learned early on I could use this form of math to draw shapes.”
This is readily apparent in SUPERNOVA as his work is dominated by motifs of geometric shapes, particularly trapezoids, triangles, spheres and squares. Vargas’ aesthetic also includes recurring grids within these shapes and a color palette that varies from patterns of carnival primary colors to subtler secondary variations. The paintings vibrate and pop in a sort of Op Art fashion. Though they flirt with the decorative, their pleasing color schemes, repetitive patterns and energy more than hint at greater depth.
“If simple patterns repeat, it can become complex,” Vargas said. “My relationship with how we exist is through systems of energy and movement such as weather, geology, language. The world is a complex place. We break it down in order to understand it.”
And then build it back up again, as most artists do, in a cosmos of their own creation. Even if not readily grasped by a viewer, most artists are happy with their work being experienced. “I hope one won’t just see merely decoration or chaos,” Vargas said, “and at least feel there is a system or concept. I’m fine with the ambiguity.”
There is nothing ambiguous about the sensory impact that SUPERNOVA initially makes, particularly with Vargas’ two sets of “Trapezoids” in the southeast corner, a mixed media mosaic of many smaller, similar geometric shapes; and a set of six starburst images to the right with titles such as “Pinwheel” and “NanoNova.” In the first set, each Trapezoid “contains” smaller versions that reinforce themselves, yet in this system, are greater than the sum of their parts.
In the second set, each squarish painting is made of triangular striations that radiate from the center, each a supernova of its own, born to burn brighter than the sun, before its decline. This set is more organic and more chaotic than “Trapezoids” but not nearly so as Vargas’ stunning showpiece “Primozic Anomaly,” a lovely starburst that twists and turns sensually on its axis.
In sharp contrast to this more colorful work is the solo sculpture with its intimidating title, “Rhombicuboctahedron,” a far cry from earlier Vargas creations made of bottle caps, beer tabs and computer keys. This work is a rather stark, largely black and white, three-foot “sphere” made of 24 faces or surfaces, 48 edges and 24 vertices. Vargas calls it a “simplified sphere as opposed to having an infinite number of sides,” another indication of this show’s optical illusion of chaos and cosmos.
But SUPERNOVA’s greatest dichotomy is another wall mosaic named just that.
“Dichotomy” is another of Vargas’ trapezoids composed of many, many smaller variations that hang in space together but appear ready to burst from their larger form. They all have a similar grid of parallel black lines, but virtually none of them line up to each other. Thus their connectiveness is both as real and tenuous as the bond that exists between the cells, atoms and quarks that make up our universe.
It’s this polarizing effect that has always energized Vargas’ work further enhanced by his preference for and skill in creating sustainable art. He even scavenges from other artist studios and frame shops. With SUPERNOVA, he has shown once again that one man’s trash is another’s treasure.
SUPERNOVA continues through Aug. 6, at Anderson O’Brien Fine Art in the Old Market, 1108 Jackson St. For details, visit AOBfineart.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
