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Sunday, October 25, 2009
Artist's return a study in beauty
By Wesley Pulkka
For the Journal
Kevin Zuckerman's "Beauty and Desire," a show of solo paintings at the Dartmouth Street Gallery, spotlights an artist in transition between styles and personal identity.
Zuckerman grew up on the road with his globe-trotting parents and five brothers and sisters. Teen years in Greece led to an appreciation of classical art, while his residency in a multiplicity of other cultures opened his perspective on humanity.
Zuckerman is known in European art circles as Martin Maloy, an invented name paying homage to his Celtic roots. As Maloy, Zuckerman — a dedicated romantic — explores a more stylized and exaggerated expression of the human figure. Examples of his Maloy style are included in an interview published last year in Futuro, a European contemporary art magazine.
Back in his American persona, Zuckerman continues his ongoing post-modernist deconstruction of his signature blend of figurative classicism and abstract expressionism. His expressionist application of heavy paint passages in juxtaposition with his polished, portrait-quality figures makes the composition dissolve into an inter-dimensional experience.
The DSG "Beauty and Desire" exhibition is a mixture of small- and medium-sized realistic close-up studies of lips, eyes and facial fragments alongside mural-scale, full-figure compositions. The show echoes experiments by kindred spirit Carlo Maria Mariani.
In "Linger," Zuckerman paints full lips that seem to float within a flesh-toned space, much like surrealist Man Ray's portrait of photographer Lee Miller's disembodied red lips floating in a blue sky.
Another touch of surrealism is found in "Rapture," a life-size male nude mysteriously seated on an unsupported column of red drapery. Zuckerman's male nudes also share a kinship with Michelangelo's sculpture titled "The Dying Slave."
The concurrent themes of sensuality, dreams, mortality and spirituality are punctuated with a still life of stones and a lone egg that references astronomer Carl Sagan, who once said "We are star stuff" to explain the multibillion-year transition from the big bang to the existence of humanity.
Two female nude figures occupy the show's title painting, "Beauty and Desire," that is accompanied by a poem, "Awake in the middle of the night reaching for immortality."
The line could refer to procreation, but it also has more cosmic and spiritual implications. Most ancient cultures encouraged the exploration of both day and night dreams as a way of understanding the true nature of being.
In "Caress," Zuckerman incorporates a Japanese woodblock-style composition with a woman standing in the lower center left of the painting under a single pink-flower-covered tree branch arching over her from the right side. The whole design has an appealing snapshot quality.
Zuckerman remains an enormous talent, and this show represents a comeback for the artist, who has fully recovered from a long illness. He experiments with and examines the expressive potential of his medium while improving his skills. This show represents a pulling back from a compulsive drive toward surface perfection into a more relaxed approach to painting.
I look forward to future developments for this internationally recognized local artist.
Zuckerman's intimate presentation includes paintings of flowers, real flowers, scented candles and subdued lighting. The overall impression is of sweet seduction enhanced with one- and two-line poems conveying whispered intimacies between the artist and viewer. Many people will enjoy this presentation, while others like myself may find it a bit discomforting.
If you go
WHAT: "Beauty and Desire," new work by Kevin Zuckerman
WHEN: Solo show runs through Nov. 30. Open by appointment.
WHERE: Dartmouth Street Gallery, 510 14th SW
HOW MUCH: Free. Call 266-7751 or 800-474-7751.
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