Wednesday, May 5, 2010

"I am, Become"

Painting by Mexican American born artist, Omar Rodriguez-Graham. Please comment in English or Spanish.

4 comments:

  1. Gruesome imagery, but I like the brushwork. Reminds me of Soutine in subject matter, but if I focus on a small area, I get a Chuck Close vibe. Now there are two artists you don't see mentioned together much.

    I could do without the flat black space. Some of the work on his website avoids that.

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  2. The settings aren't quite flat black, in this or other carcass pictures. You can just make out a table or ground on which the carcass rests, and a slightly lighter plane or wall above that.

    Maybe it's a very Spanish kind of gloom - Goya.... Velasquez...

    But yeah I think it's the methodical, programmatic approach to the brushwork that reminds us of Close - although I was more reminded of Jenny Saville's recent carcass pictures, which have a less robust - even voluptuous facture - but a similar measured, methodical quality to them.

    In some ways they seem like exercises in technique, especially with such a loaded subject (Rembrandt before Soutine or Saville...). I guess they're about some sort of distancing - converting hot content into cool brushstrokes, although the existential title puzzles me. Perhaps there's supposed to be some sense of awareness accompanying the painting procedure. Although I can't think what he might discover about these heavy, careful slabs of paint.

    It feels too technical or academic to me. Although he's clearly very deft at the planar/tonal simplifications. But I don't see this as grounds for 'becoming' much more than a student.

    The gore aspect seems to permeate previous work (strangely the website only brings us as far as 2008). Some look like medical or autopsy observations. Again, I sense an appeal to something very immediate or hot, physical harm! Confronted by severe discipline and a big brush.

    A big brush with death?

    I think he needs to see more of life before deciding what death looks like.

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  3. Thanks, CAP, yes I see the background does have a sort of horizon line. The fault was in the brightness setting on my other computer screen.

    The gruesome images on his website took me immediately to what is happening in the Mexico-US border towns with the drug cartels' killing spree. Also happens in cities of Mexico, so maybe he has seen some of this up close, so to speak.

    Surely others must have comments on this painting??

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  4. Well yeah, savage times, definitely. Although there's not really any sense of shock or urgency to the work - as you might expect with an allusion to violent crime. It's very deliberate, formal, almost ritualistic.

    No ambushes or drive-bys here.

    It is a shame no MC painters have so far commented - for all JC's FB popularity.

    Time for another post JC?

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