Art-Full Life

I am so glad I caught John Ruppert’s amazing show, The Nature of Things, at C. Grimaldis Gallery before we were distracted by earthquakes, hurricanes, and power outages!  Hope you got there, too—but just in case—I wanted to add a few words on this recently closed but memorable exhibition, which raises the bar for all of us here in Baltimore.

As I arrived, the shades across the gallery’s front windows were drawn closed and the first gallery was darkened.  At its center stood Sunken Grid with Strike and Koi Projection, a huge metal mesh coop, a series of boxes, three across and four down, linked together and listing to one side, as if it had sunk into the wooden floor at an angle.   A cast iron fragment evoking a tree limb or trunk—a cast lightning strike long familiar from John’s work—rested across the coop, as though it had floated gently into place.

Just as I thought “this must be a sunken treasure,” I realized that the video projected across its surface showed a swirling school of carp, their orange and white bodies flickering on the floor, through the coop, and onto the walls.  I was submerged in the silent-but-very-busy depths of an unknown ocean, a witness to the intersection between man and nature.  As we learned these past two weeks, man is not always in control of the outcome!

Not far away, a boulder sat in the corner of the room surrounded by an aureole of rust, perhaps a misplaced fragment of a mountain that has dropped into the water, too. This is actually a created object, not one found and re-purposed.  Its quiet presence reminded us of earth’s endurance, a counterbalance to John’s lightning-struck trees and abandoned treasures.

In Core with Rocks, an installation in the back gallery, a roll of galvanized steel netting stood tall, its concentric circles carefully built and arranged into a pattern that became denser and denser towards its center and its base. The intricate shadows cast by this piece were as much a part of its impact as the less ephemeral elements, three cast iron rocks, aged and rusted but none of their crisp, sharp contours yet smoothed by the wearing of time and elements.

John’s photographs rounded out the show.  These views of water in darkness—the elemental New England shoreline of John’s native Maine—bordered on abstraction.  Their rocks and islands, deep blue and purple and occasionally framed by a leafy surround, show a darkness only possible far from cities, even towns.  Despite their tie to a specific place and time, the simplicity and emotional power of works like Final Light are reminiscent of Mark Rothko and others in his generation.

It’s exciting to see so much growth and change in the work of an artist already recognized as a Mary Sawyers Baker award-winner—and all accomplished in 2011! If you ever have the chance, visit John’s Reservoir Hill studio, a cavernous building that was previously a church, a roller skating rink, and for the longest part of its life, a trolley warehouse.  On a visit to this majestic space earlier this summer, I saw familiar pieces resting in storage —lightning strikes, boulders, and chain link pieces, one suspended from the ceiling, its powerful bulbous shape looking like a deflated balloon—as well as an intriguing just-completed sound piece—water recorded gurgling through the center of a split rock.  John is already well on his way toward another body of work!

Check out John Ruppert’s studio—and his ever-evolving work—during the Open Studio Tour that will be held by Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts on Saturday, October 22, and Sunday, October 23, from 10 am to 6 pm.

At a recent tour of his solo show Battle Cry, René Treviño revealed that one of his inspirations is Andy Warhol.  Like the Pop icon, Rene transforms familiar images, celebrates the physical acts of painting and drawing, and makes us deeply aware of the power of an artist’s individual touch. Rene’s show at C. Grimaldis Gallery and the major exhibition of Warhol’s late work on view at the BMA  gives us an opportunity to experience firsthand the iconic artist’s work and his enduring impact on our own arts community. (Warhol: The Last Decade, on-view through January 9, will be open for extended evening hours tomorrow Saturday, October 30 during the Warhol Late Night party.) 

Andy Warhol. Self-Portrait. 1986. Mugrabi Collection. ©2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Rene’s work—always simultaneously beautiful and thought-provoking— tells his personal story through a series of images. These also allude to our shared history and culture. He incorporates everything from manifest destiny and war to Aztec carvings, American photographs, and European sculptures. Each time he appropriates an image, Rene makes it very much his own. 

In Self-Portrait, we don’t see Rene, but instead a magnificent black bird, described by the artist as “a power animal” who guides him to the right decisions.  The bird is perched beside an Aztec calendar that glows like the sun. When Rene first saw a limestone carving of the Aztec calendar in Mexico City in 2004, he felt as though he had been “punched in the stomach … it was like coming home.” It soon became a familiar icon in his work. A source of wisdom, it connects him to his ancestry. 

Each of the works in this exhibition is exquisitely painted or drawn, often on Mylar, and in their presence, you are totally aware of the richness of their surfaces. Take a close look at General Sherman and His Men, where Rene recreated Civil War photographer Matthew Brady’s infamous scene of the general and his associates gathered in an interior. The faces and uniforms of these grim men are captured in bold graphite. Rene has posed them in front of yellow floral wallpaper, drawn delicately with colored pencil. 

The back room of the gallery is lined with full length portraits of standing men—among them, a 19th-century general and Indian chief; a 20th-century astronaut and artist; and a 21st-century football star. These men seem to be in conversation with one another.  We, the audience, are in their midst—realizing their ambitions, foibles, and anxieties.  

Battle Cry remains on view until November 12. And year round you can see the fruits of Rene’s arts-administrator work at School 33.  A 2005 graduate of MICA’s Mount Royal School of Art, Rene exemplifies the energy and vision brought to Baltimore by the rising generation of visual artists who are drawn here by opportunities to live, work, and study.