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Pitch Weekly Review

Really red and larger than life  
BY   CARA WAL Z

   Despite technological advances in every field of study, no one has yet invented a device that measures the impact of a work of art upon the viewer, a combination intellectual/emotional tremor detector, if you will. There are days when the art critic would thank heaven above for such a mechanical marvel, but while the art-o-meter remains only a dream, one must rely on the heart and head to render judgment.

    Forced to rely on the flesh-and-bone meter, work in commercial galleries usually registers somewhere in the middle of the scale, neither exceedingly horrible nor profoundly insightful. Financial considerations demand that the work be technically proficient, but at the same time, formal and conceptual issues beyond that which can be shown easily and for a price are rarely considered.

    The Late Show can afford to skirt around these demands a bit. Operating out of a residence, the overhead is low, so financial risks can be taken. At its best, this gallery features early-career artists not yet beaten into submission by market trends. Space is limited, though, so the work shown rarely deviates from a comfortable two-dimensions. In other words, it's meant for the living room wall of any middle- or upper-class home.

    This personal obsession with middle-of-the-road, middle-income, middle-American taste aside, The Late Show's current artists present work with a challenging edge and a youthful, quirky presence. Larry McAnany and Lad each give the squeeze to two divergent traditions, abstraction and figuration, respectively.

    It becomes necessary to mentally erase McAnany's two mixed-media pieces and focus on his six red paintings on paper, because they are neither formally nor intellectually tied to their counterparts and read like unsuccessful Rauschenberg collages. The paintings, on the other hand, box-like forms done in shades of blood red, transcend their formal look and elicit an emotion somewhere in between fright and delight. Extreme simplicity and the color red allow one's eye the freedom to experience something akin to a cinematic vision through over-tinted sunglasses.

   All of these paintings are untitled, which adds to their deadpan charm. In each, from one to three cubic forms emerge from a ground divided by the mere suggestion of a horizon line. In one, this division reads clearly due to a value shift between earth and sky, lending an architectural context to two slender columns. In another, the horizon exists only because McAnany carved a material division in the red paint with his palette knife.

    Even divisions between figure and ground become suggestive as opposed to actual. Value shifts are extremely subtle throughout, and crisp edges remain elusive. Because these paintings rely on basic form, one's eye needs only minor angle and shape changes to complete the gestalt. McAnany's work uses an economy of means to reveal an irreverent, hauntingly familiar, simplified world of verticals and horizontals.

    An economy of means and an irreverence for complicated, high-minded art inform Lad's work as well. Of the two brief sentences in her statement, one reads, "Like fiction, art fills the void left by fact." Perhaps this attitude toward a simple, poetic approach to art reveals the naivete of an artist at an early stage in her career. If so, at least the work she presents remains fresh and avoids sentimental, hackneyed themes.

    Still, one has to pick through some-less-than-stellar work to get to the good stuff. Several generic mixed-media pieces detract from her focus on the male nude, where Lad explores the role of artist as voyeur.

   The artist ignores propriety and indulges in the act of looking with many of these works, adopting a simple line to represent the male torso. In "Grab," her most obvious reference to desire, a hand reaches into the picture plane toward the genitals of a standing male nude.

    The brief, cryptic pencil lines in these drawings reveal the human form with surprising clarity. In both "Lay Down" and "Straight," where the titles refer to the figure's position, all visual interest unabashedly centers around the genital area with no concern for the subject's identity, since his head and shoulders lie beyond the picture plane. In both drawings, the subject's penis is semi-erect and larger than life: Thus, Lad's awareness of the "fiction" in art.

    "Man Drawing," a more studied male torso, and "Brown Boy," a large painting, inform the simple line drawings, revealing an artist with a broad technical understanding who has consciously chosen to work in a refreshingly blunt manner.

    In the context of a commercial gallery, where size counts and color must match the decor, our fictional art seismograph's readings would jump past the midpoint when aimed at the work of both McAnany and Lad. Although neither create a full-blown earthquake, each are capable of generating an unexpected aftershock.