Gallery Bergelli is pleased to present John McNamara: A Survey of Paintings.
Opening February 10, with the Gallery Reception from 5:30-7:30pm and Artist Talk
at 6:30pm, the exhibition continues through March 5, 2012.
John McNamara
makes surrealist photo-collages and then slowly covers them with a layer of oil
paint, mixing not only figuration and abstraction, but also raising questions
about representation in the way that many photographers of constructed realities
are also doing, writes DeWitt Cheng in catalog essay accompanying the
exhibition. For John McNamara collage is a time machine of sorts. The painted
skin on top jettisons the photo document into the world of painting; but these
people, places and things still speak from underneath the painted skin.
Photography's frozen moment is resurrected into a sustained romantic presence.
"A Survey of Paintings" exhibition will consist of fifteen new works
investigating notions of transcendence, moments in collective popular culture,
and sharable life realities.
"Some of McNamara's eye-popping
obsessive-compulsive covers or coverlets include "Wise Ass," a panoramic
landscape reminiscent of Dali in its succulent palette and unfettered fantasy;
"Encroachment," a merger of two images of high-altitude maintenance workers in
New York City and Dallas; "The Suitors," depicting a Gothic Revival mansion and
its upstart neighbor, a postmodernist work in progress "Unreal," a montage of
children, wounded soldiers and movie spectators with the epic quality of
nineteen-century history painting, but without its canned sentiments; and "White
on Color," a large painting combining scores of images dealing with various
types of "space" that have been edited with white paint and then preserved and
muted by an overall glazing of white-tinted wax, resulting in a kind of artifact
already dimmed and obscured by time. Social satire, surrealist fantasy and elegy
vie with formal concerns in these works, but however ambiguous or enigmatic the
narrative implications, the images are always compelling to viewers open to
their eccentric seductions. With their surreal juxtapositions and cinematic jump
cuts, they are, in the words of Gerrit Henry (Art in America), "ridiculous and
sublime, all at once"-like real life." DeWitt Cheng
John McNamara has
exhibited widely and teaches art at UC Berkeley. His work is included in the
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, the Currier Museum of Art, Danforth Art Museum, DeCordova Museum,
Fuller Museum of Art, J.B. Speed Museum of Art, MIT List Visual Art Center, Rose
Art Museum, Smith College of Art Museum, Tampa Museum of Art, Tucson Museum of
Art, Davis Museum and Cultural Center and the Worcester Art Museum to name but a
few. He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Massachusetts Arts and Humanities
Grants (1980, 1983, 1986, 1989); Awards in the Visual Arts Fellowship 2,
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship.
