Last week (Octo­ber 6) was the open­ing night of Brett Amory’s solo show at San­dra Lee Gallery in San Fran­cisco, CA. Despite being excited about the show, I had to reign back my excite­ment to make sure that my response to the work was as thought­ful as his can­non for mak­ing it. Amory’s min­i­mal­ist rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the urban-​scape are not only beau­ti­ful paint­ings, they also reflect inter­est­ing beliefs about the urban envi­ron­ment and it’s inhabitants.

When I started look­ing at Amory’s work I nat­u­rally thought of Amer­i­can painter-​printmaker, Edward Hop­per, who is best known for his 1942 paint­ing “Nighthawks” and his 1953 paint­ing “Office in a Small City.” As I researched Amory I stum­bled upon a brief descrip­tion of his work by Warho­lian founder Mike Cuffe that made a sim­i­lar com­par­i­son. How­ever, as I stud­ied the two works in par­al­lel, they became wildly dif­fer­ent. While Hop­per keeps his sub­ject cap­tive within the urban infra­struc­ture, Amory sets his sub­ject free from any archi­tec­tural enclo­sure, exist­ing out­side of this space and being cap­ti­vated only in their own “men­tal space”. This hap­pens because the for­mer builds up the urban fab­ric while the lat­ter allows that fab­ric to dis­in­te­grate into key ele­ments — real­ism ver­sus symbolism.

There are moments in Amory’s paint­ings where the white space starts encroach­ing on the image and almost over­comes it com­pletely. In the show state­ment, San­dra Lee Gallery explains that “by reduc­ing the ele­ments of the paint­ing as far as pos­si­ble, a frozen moment is extended.” That is quite the head fake. Paint­ing less to aug­ment a spa­tial expe­ri­ence. Amory describes the devel­op­ment of his wait­ing series as one that “changed from [depict­ing] mun­dane tasks [to paint­ings] leav­ened with tran­scen­dence.” This tran­scen­dence, I believe, can be attrib­uted to the afore­men­tioned “men­tal” con­struct rather than the phys­i­cal spaces described in the paint­ings. By edit­ing down the envi­ron­ment so rig­or­ously, Amory’s paint­ing of the city end up really being stud­ies of people.

Amory’s rig­or­ous edit­ing process also allows the viewer to enter his work. He gen­er­ates con­di­tions where view­ers can insert their own nar­ra­tives. With few hints of the time of the day, geog­ra­phy and social order the spaces are dema­te­ri­al­ized and serve as a plat­form for us to pon­der our own rela­tion­ship to the city. To me, the nar­ra­tive becomes about the tran­sience of the city — an organ­ism that is con­stantly chang­ing, adapt­ing and respond­ing. Amory doesn’t only cap­ture this tran­sient inhab­i­ta­tion as a moment of pause, by using the mul­ti­plic­ity of fig­ures he is able to cap­ture move­ment through space. What I enjoy about this rep­e­ti­tion of the motifs is how they ani­mate the paint­ing chang­ing it from an aes­thetic object to a cin­e­matic moment.

Still, there are par­al­lels. Both artists are adding a sense of hero­ism to mun­dane tasks such as wait­ing for a bus (Amory) or eat­ing at a diner (Hop­per). And as archi­tect and urban plan­ner Edmund Bacon might con­clude with his epi­taph, both painters are respond­ing to sim­i­lar con­di­tions of the city and have the same mis­sion, “to heighten the drama of life.”

Video cour­tesy of Mike Cuffe from Warho​lian​.com
Images cour­tesy of the artist.

Also, a big thank you to Loren Howard, Diana Man­gaser, and Roma Chatham at Rhode Island School of Design for many engag­ing con­ver­sa­tions about what tran­scient inhab­i­ta­tion means.

Tags: Brett Amory, Diana Mangaser, Loren Howard, Mike Cuffe, Roma Chatham, Sandra Lee Gallery

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 11th, 2010 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Art, Critique, Event.
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