// arts & culture //
A WORLD OF
SENSORY OVERLOAD
“BEAUTY REIGNS: A BAROQUE SENSIBILITY IN RECENT PAINTING” AT THE MCNAY ENGAGES VIEWERS WITH BOTH THE WORLDLY AND THE MYSTERIOUS.
“BEAUTY REIGNS: A Baroque Sensibility in Recent Painting” at the McNay Museum captures a post-graffiti sensibility mixing visual elements of design, illustration, graphics and artistic liberties and drawing the viewer into a world of sensory overload. According to the McNay Museum’s press release, “‘Beauty Reigns’ features the work of 13 intergenerational emerging and mid-career abstract painters, working in studios across the United States. The exhibition is organized by René Paul Barilleaux, the McNay’s chief curator/curator of art after 1945, and celebrates the exoticism, exuberance and optimism found in the artists’ work. Among the shared characteristics found in this highly diverse group, in whole or part, are high-key color, layering of surface imagery, use of overall and repeated patterns, stylized motifs, fragmented representations and a tension between melancholy and the sublime. 68
/ NHOME MAY//JUNE 2014
“The exhibition surveys works by artists with both national and international perspectives. Americans Annette Davidek, Nancy Lorenz and Ryan McGinness are based in New York. Charles Burwell lives and works in Pennsylvania; Paul Henry Ramirez in New Jersey; RYAN Rex Ray in MCGINNESS, "THE California; RoTRUE KNOWLEDGE OF THINGS", 2007. salyn Schwartz Acrylic on canvas, in Illinois; and 96 × 96 in. Collection Susan Chrysler of The Museum White in Iowa. of Contemporary “Global visuArt San Diego, California. Courtesy al vocabularies of Ryan McGinness are expressed Studios, Inc./Art in works by Resource, NY. © Jose Alvarez Ryan McGinness/ (D.O.P.A), born Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York in Venezuela and based in Florida; Kamrooz Aram, Iran and New York; Jiha Moon, South Korea and Georgia; Fausto Fernandez, born in Texas, raised in Mexico and currently based in California; and Beatriz Milhazes, a Brazilian native who continues to live and work in her home country.” “‘Beauty Reigns: A Baroque Sensibility in Recent Painting’ confirms a vitality of abstract painting today,” Barilleaux said. “This exhibition requires that the viewer travel to and voyage through visual territory that seems somewhat foreign or somewhat familiar, yet always rewarding.” “Only a Thief Thinks Everybody Steals,” by McGinness, is the highlight of the museum presentation, summarizing the overall aesthetic of the exhibition and staying true to all organizational prose and manifested ideals of what “Beauty Reigns: A Baroque
PHOTO COURTESY OF MCNAY/BIGSTOCK.COM
// BY: GABRIEL DIEGO DELGADO