Mark Schmiedl at Polychrome Fine Art and Caitlin Ambery at Dale’s by Philip Willey.

Mark Schmiedl’s solo show at Polychrome is titled Syncretic Caves which suggests the artist is attempting to reconcile opposing, even contradictory, principles and practices.

I first saw Mark Schmiedl’s work in a group show at the Polychrome Gallery a few years ago and I remember being struck by one painting in particular. It’s called ‘Film for Painted Televisions’ and it got me thinking. What does all this digital imagery we are bombarded with really mean? How does it connect to reality? ‘Film for Painted Televisions’ epitomizes these concerns. Schmiedl likens it to constantly changing channels but he’s also fascinated by the way information is transformed and the image reproduction process itself. He seems to want to pin down the area between physical reality and the photographic, the retinal and the imaginative, the digital and the painterly.



Meaning here is elusive, perhaps purposely concealed beneath colours and forms. The titles too seem deliberately distracting. The cryptically named ‘Breeding 2.6 Billion Horses’ for instance refers to a source of geo thermal energy….the horses being horsepower. I know this because I asked but it isn’t spelled out.

Schmiedl says he is happy for viewers to attach their own interpretations. He sees it as part of the process. He provides hints but it’s up to the viewer to bring meaning. The work is abstract with an underlying suggestiveness. In ‘After Manet’ (not included in the show at Polychrome, see website*) most people will recognize Manet’s ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbes’. Schmiedl’s version is a painting about a painting but his interpretation shows it at several removes from the original. The familiar figures and the background are there but they have been reduced to painterly apparitions. The effect is of a preliminary study but still a separate aesthetic object in its own right.



It’s hard to put this kind of painting into words. One thinks of Kandinsky’s Improvisations where colour and form exist independently of content, or Gorky and other artists who worked on the borderline between figuration and abstraction. Ground-breaking at the time it had a major impact on art history which culminated in abstract expressionism. Not that Schmiedl is in any way confrontational. A couple of the paintings at Polychrome are large but not overpowering. There are no polemics. He obviously enjoys moving paint around but his work is quietly cerebral rather than expressionistic. Fluid without being discordant. More Gorky than De Kooning. In fact he shows this debt to Ashile Gorky in ‘Gorkian Landscape’ where a confusion of figures and forms is woven together into a cohesive whole.



In a statement Schmiedl says….

“It is in free time that we face nothing, a playground for creation, cultural mutation and amnesia. These paintings explore the middle ground between using paint linguistically for representation and paint as a meaningful and self- supporting language of its own, enabling one to think visually. The images aim to be aesthetically engaged, the world is much too anesthetically engaged, while attempting to maintain social significance and a collective meaning.

Take some photographs of film screens. A vernacular painting which is an effect of environmental conditions and is engaged in an aesthetic of anti-artificiality. Play is possibility embodied. To maintain the content and grounding of a narrative while having an all-over relative pulse.”

I didn’t go to the show expecting any definitive answers….art always poses more questions than solutions….but I found Mark Schmiedl’s paintings rewarding. They succeed very well as contemplative objects.

http://www.markschmiedl.com/

 

Dale’s Gallery is showing paintings by Caitlin Ambery a very talented young artist from Northern B.C. It’s probably a stretch to make comparisons with Mark Schmiedl but in some ways Ambery takes a similar approach.



She too is interested in the point where recognizable objects become abstract but she approaches the equation in a different way. She uses abstract elements but with no attempt to obscure the content. All the paintings at Dale’s except one, an interior, are landscapes with local connotations. These are bright swirling paintings full of undulating lines and unresolved areas. Trees, towns, whales etc. are integrated to create paintings which are unconstrained by frames. There is an obvious love of place and I found the overall sense of movement and wholeness reminiscent of Emily Carr.

 

Caitlin Ambery’s show runs at Dales Gallery until October 5^th

https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAmberyArt

Philip Willey

Mark Schmiedl at Polychrome Fine Art

ABSTRACTION - "Snow Scud" by Philip Willey

Film for Painted Television by Mark Schmiedl

The collection of abstract works at Polychrome appears austere at first sight but an underlying vitality soon becomes apparent. They range from the expressive to the experimental, paintings to sculpture and combinations of the two. There are 13 artists in the show and it’s called Snow Scud…a climate thing said Mary Patterson. It’s a loose theme. Here in Victoria we try to stay ahead of real winters. In the window is ‘Transporter 3 (Flock)’ by Charles Campbell’s. He has incorporated cut and printed birdlike forms into a Buckminster Fuller type of geodesic ball which suggests circular migration. Also in the window are some small pieces by Tyler Hodgins. Magnetic tape embedded in plastic. Tyler’s more accessible work is gaining acceptance in Victoria as public art. He’s also part of ‘Show Down’ at AGGV later this month during which his latest public project, ‘Sleeping Bag’, can be seen at various locations throughout the city. Tar is a viscous tacky substance. Donna Eichel uses it in rhythmic strokes, along with other substances to create rich visceral‘… mindscapes with their own psychological or emotional geography.’ In the two paintings at Polychrome she employs oil paint on plexiglass to much the same effect. Her work has been described as “cave paintings from a distant past or possible future”.  As I’m musing on Caite Dheere’s vaguely Twomblyesque minimalisms glowing through layers of encaustic and thinking how they could easily grow on one over time, I can’t help noticing an old dude wandering around making notes on scraps of paper. Is he a critic? What’s a critic doing in Victoria? What sort of stuff does he write I wonder. Intellectual exegesis for academics? Snotty artspeak for the incrowd?  Short words and bad speling 4 twitter peeps? I have the same problem myself. Never quite sure what style to use. And these group shows are tricky. Don’t want to leave anybody out. It’s good to know that Karl Spreitz is still going strong. The works on display are from 1975, geometric forms that look surprisingly fresh and contemporary. Ingrid Mary Percy’s calligraphic charcoal shapes on paper may be related to the Spirograph forms I remember seeing at Deluge Gallery. Mark Schmiedl’s work is hard to get a handle on. That may well be his intention. There are suggestions of Kandinsky and Motherwell but not in a derivative sense. A statement on his website says his paintings ‘…aspire to be self-interupting.’ An unintentional slip but curiously apt somehow. The wonderfully titled ‘Film for Painted Televisions’ is a large painting where abstract forms almost, but not quite, become recognizable objects. Meanwhile Lance Olsen pauses his walkabout across the Australian outback with its Antipodean earth-tones and dreamtime tracks to show a brooding but strangely celebratory undated acrylic on paper work called ‘Death by Proxy # 3’. The show also features work by Cody Haight, David Gifford and PJ Kelly. Plus there’s another chance to see some of Shawn Shepherd’s sliced up hockey pucks. I’m not going to single anyone out for special attention. Some of the works spoke to me more than others but let’s not get into what John Luna calls the ‘autocritical mist’. I’m no Jerry Saltz and I want to go on living in Victoria. Artists want cheerleaders anyway, not critics. So think of this as a sort of prose poem. My version of Subterranean Homesick Blues with a quip or two tossed into the mix. Something to do on a cold but sunny Sunday. Kudos to Polychrome for putting together an interesting collection of artists. Apologies if I left anybody out. All I have to do now is sit back and wait for the usual barrage of comments. It’s snowing as I write which may be significant. One more thing. I was going to mention the Carmen Tisch school of art criticism. Carmen you may remember is the tattoo artist from Denver who got a little emotional at a Clyfford Still retrospective. She rubbed her bare bum against a canvas apparently causing $10,000 worth of damage (to the painting). I was going to say something about not seeing Carmen at Polychrome. A silly joke that suddenly doesn’t seem very amusing. I can’t say I knew Jamer Duderon well. Saw him around that’s all. But he was too young to die. It’s very sad.

Snow Scud
Jan. 15 to Feb. 2, 2012  
Polychrome Fine Arts 

Mark Schmield exhibit - " Strange Fruit in Ghostland " - at Polychrome Fine Arts