Lia Cook, “Dollface,” at Perimeter Gallery and Jeffery Cote de Luna, “New Paintings: Remixed and Reset” at Freeark Gallery at Riverside ARTS Center
Pointillism gets an update at two art exhibits
Lia Cook and Jeffery Cote de Luna put new spins on pointillism
For those of you who occasionally visit the Art Institute’s second floor Impressionism galleries just to stare deep into Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (not unlike Cameron in John Hughes‘ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), read on. The suggestion with art of this scale is that if we look hard enough at something, we start to understand the deeper meaning behind it — and, just maybe, the deeper meaning in life.
The irony is that Seurat’s piece, one of the more famous examples of turn-of-the-century pointillism, is best taken in from a distance. Look too closely and all you see are tiny dots of color, neatly lined up on the canvas.
Though contemporary pointillism is nothing new (the current trend being recreating pixelated computer images), the recent coincidence of simultaneously receiving news of two pseudo-pointillism shows led me to revisit the subject for myself. River North’s Perimeter Gallery is showing the work of Lia Cook, whose artist’s statement explains that she’s most interested in three aspects of her viewer’s experience: his or her initial engagement of the work at a distance, the action of moving in for a closer look to “experience the dissolution of image into pattern (maze),” and the moment when they realize, up close, that her images consist of thousands — maybe millions — of threads. Not points, threads.
That third step of observation is what struck me most about Cook’s creations — and, ultimately, what makes them work. The pieces included at Perimeter, “Dollface,” are aptly named portraits of dolls — some decapitated heads, some shirtless torsos. Unlike Seurat’s masterpiece, Cook’s art gets more interesting the closer you look. It’s not just the threads (all of the works at Perimeter are a woven blend of cotton and rayon); there are actually patterns and mazes and designs. Though works like “Cindy IV” from a distance resemble a captured still from a fuzzy television screen, up close they are mesmerizing and meticulous.
Whether you’re irked by images of doll heads is hardly the issue: This is textile art made by a master of her craft. The technique almost overshadows the aesthetic. But maybe that’s the point.
The same could be said of Jeffery Cote de Luna, whose “points” are pixels cataloged from a blend of masterworks downloaded from the Internet. The process is part of his ongoing Monochrome Project, for which he has been investigating color averages of Western European oil paintings, “remixing and resetting” them into computer-calculated blocks of color and tone. A handful of new works are hanging at Riverside ARTS Center’s tiny, tidy Freeark Gallery, which is worth a visit if you’ve never been.
Without the accompanying literature, Cote de Luna’s pixelated works, such as “Untitled (Reset I),” are interesting, but vacant; his single blocks of color stacked on one another, like “Odalisque I and II,” look like flattened Mark Rothko interpretations. These are both in Freeark’s front room.
Thankfully, the back room reveals Cote de Luna’s methods, and gives viewers a reason to linger for a second look. On one of the back walls hangs a stacked grid of framed images: two reclining female nudes (odalisques) by French neo-classical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres — one black-and-white, one color — adjacent to Cote de Luna’s interpretation: two blocks of color. As the artist’s statement explains, the color-blocked canvases are derived by “averaging the tones of each image to a single pixel of color consisting of certain percentages of red, green and blue.” And just like that, the simple, gray-and-black painting in the front room, “Odalisque I and II,” is no longer a poor-man’s Rothko. It’s still simple, but now it speaks.
Cote de Luna’s Monochrome Project is incredibly math-centered, based on the evidence displayed on an adjacent table in the back room. There are charts and facts and figures detailing the color tones of various Western European classic paintings, reducing entire centuries into simple squares of color, laid side by side like market research. A quick glance at this paperwork demonstrated the most tangible revelation to this reviewer: Based on Cote de Luna’s research thus far (for which he recruits the help of some of his students at Dominican University), 16th century paintings appear to be slightly more brown than those of the 17th; 19th century works are definitively more greenish-gray than 18th.
Cote de Luna’s goal is to find and download 2,400 images (10 artists x 10 paintings x 6 countries x 4 centuries) for the sake of his work, which seems a bit ambitious, especially when the results are so easily misinterpreted. Then again, maybe we’re just not looking closely enough.
lviera@tribune.com
Lia Cook, “Dollface,” at Perimeter Gallery, 210 W. Superior St., 312-266-9473; perimetergallery.com. Closes Sat. Jeffery Cote de Luna, “New Paintings: Remixed and Reset,” at Freeark Gallery at Riverside ARTS Center, 32 E. Quincy Road, Riverside, 708-442-6400; riversideartscenter.com. Closes Nov. 20.
Some other cool mazes, from Team Of Monkeys .com and from InkBlotMazes.com (Free Web Content)
Maze Artist Yonatan Frimer who started drawing mazes when he broke his leg.
A Maze portrait of albert einstein created by Yonatan Frimer.
“I have always found einstein to be a fascinating person” says Frimer, “At some point he changed the course of history with his findings.”
Maze Portrait of Albert Einstein.
“Genius Maze” – By Y. Frimer
Mazes Celebrity Portraits Activity Booklet
