Tim Crowder | Play the Game

tim crowder

play th he game

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tim crow

PLAY THE GAME david lusk gallery | memphis july 2014

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Necklace and Bracelet, mixed media, 135x110 previous page: Hide, oil and enamel on panel, wood, dimensions vary next page: Doppleganger, oil and enamel on panel, 54x102.5

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Tim Crowder is as much a philosopher as a painter. Not that he writes emphatically, but it is tought not to sense that he has something deep and meaningful to impart through his art. For the last several years his focus has been on issues of consumption and disposability in our society. His style is often ironic, slightly sarcastic or witty in a dark way.

Crowder’s paintings may, at first, seem to be carefully rendered landscapes – really well composed, nice paint handling, and a good sense of light and space. Give those “landscapes” a moment to sink in and then you’re in the midst of Crowder’s world. Global warming, parenting, and urban sprawl are just a few of the topics that he depicts with imagery that looks centuries old and contemporary at the same time, similar to a fable or nursery rhyme.

This July at David Lusk Gallery in Memphis the Artist’s philosophical subject matter and witty absurdity are played on as many levels as his abilities allow. The exhibition Play the Game has no rules, giving Crowder the freedom to let his imagination take shape in more ways than one.

In the past Crowder’s paintings served as a vehicle for complex narratives layered with irony, sarcasm and whimsy. In this exhibition viewers can expect Crowder’s exressive humor but less of his usual storytelling antics. Instead, the show’s focus challenges man’s fixed perceptions of a (art-world) reality through surrealist installations of both sculpture and painting.

Originally from Missouri, Tim Crowder lives and works in Memphis. His owrk is included in collections such as the Arkansas Arts Center, Mobile Museum of Art, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, Autozone, and JP Morgan Chase. In addition, he is a recipient of the prestigious Pollack-Krasner Grant, among others. The ongoing Crowder series, “Tales of Scruffy and Friends,” can be viewed in Nordstrom stores coast to coast.

Heater, mixed media, 31x30x24

Seance at the Men’s Club, oil and enamel on panel, dimensions vary

Valise, mixed media on panel, 7x8 next page: Valise Installation, mixed media, 69x54x17

Sisters, oil and enamel on panel, 12x50

Bunny, mixed media on panel, 17x13 previous page: Display, mixed media, dimensions vary

Cake, mixed media on panel, 17x13 Cake Installation, mixed media, 71x60x67 previous page: Painting (1&2), oil and enamel on panel, 32x52

tim crowder teases illusion in ‘play the g

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“Is there any difference between what is there and what is not there, between presence and absence? Or, as fiction writer John Barth memorably wrote: ‘Reality is a nice place, but I wouldn’t want to live there.’

“Tim Crowder toys with such notions and teases our sensibilities in his exhibition “Play the Game,” through July 26 at David Lusk Gallery. Though a great deal of painting is involved — and Crowder is one of the best in this region when it comes to setting brush to a surface — this is primarily a display of installations, some quite intricate, that baffle our imaginations the way we used to be nonplussed by the puzzles and optical illusions in the back pages of comic books: ‘Which line is longer?’ ‘Which of these twins is not a twin?’ ‘How many squares are in this diagram?’

The artist asks us — no, requires us — to play along with the bag of tricks with which he creates his world of surreal and bosky fantasy, his mind-trips that dazzle like the conundrums of fairy tales in which a brave boy or girl is made to choose between the attractive of two untenable conditions. Take, for example, the three sections of “Hide,” a series of diminishing depictions of a woman wearing an apron and concealing her face with oven mitts. The hues, oil and enamel on panel, are black and white, as in film noir. We don’t know from whom she is hiding — husband, children, neighbors, us — but of course she is not hiding at all, because we see her. Brush strokes are rapid, hypnotic, yet the detail is exquisite, especially in the embroidery of the woman’s apron, until in the third and smallest piece that detail is lost in a wash of thick pigment. Do we choose which “portrait” is most accurate, most fully realized? Or do we see this triad as an image of smaller, lessening emotional engagement, the artist forcing us to turn away finally?

lusk gallery continued on pg. 28

Beast, mixed media, 42x52x24 next page: Play the Game, mixed media, 71x108x117

In similar mode, “Sisters” offers three identical portraits of girls or young women — three being the magical number in folklore and fairy tale — whose identity is hidden but whose similarities seem iron-clad. Are they, though? As in an optical illusion, we gaze intently at each of the three small oil and enamel paintings, looking intently for some variation, something atypical in what art historians call pentimento, an indication that an artist has changed his mind. No, only a few random drips of beige or tan on the right-hand image.

Perhaps the key to this exhibition, which includes some grand and elaborate constructions like the monumental “Stairs” and the clever and enticing “Cake,” is the group of five quasi portraits called “Seance at the Men’s Club.” Included in the series are the artists Paul Thek, Gustave Courbet, Rene Magritte and Martin Kippenberger and the seminal psychologist of the collective unconscious, Carl Jung. We view this series as an homage to Crowder’s ideal mentors: Courbet for his superb and intense realism, Magritte for his solemn yet playful dreamlike surrealism, Thek and Kippenberger for their versatility in many mediums and disregard for boundaries, Jung for his insight into the symbolism of the multilayered human psyche.

Jung knew, as did Freud, that the realm of the unconscious is a gigantic joke, that art itself reflects the punning and double nature of our fragile and fateful relationship to reality. We toss the dice every day, make impossible choices, and it’s at our peril that we distance ourselves from or abandon the chaos and formality that art in every form encompasses.

-Fredric Koeppel The Commercial Appeal Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Play the Game, mixed media, 83x61.5x9.5

Memento, mixed media on panel, 16x16

A very special thanks to co-conspirator & compatriot W.C. Wallace

BFF, oil and enamel on panel, 56x42 Stairs, mixed media, 99.25x26.5x99

Useful Children/Tradeschool, mixed media, 50x13x13

front cover: Detail of Bunny, mixed media on panel, 17x13 back cover: Annoying Boy, mixed media, dimensions vary

David Lusk Gallery exhibits and sells art created by a talented group of artists – living in the Midsouth and beyond. The artwork at DLG defines the creative spirit, diversity and excitement of our region.

DLG originally opened its doors in 1995 in Memphis with a commitment to exhibiting art that is well crafted, always intriguing, sometimes meditative and frequently thought provoking. DLG’s unique program and vision have made it a recognized destination for what is current and important in art of the Southeastern US. The Gallery is located in the heart of East Memphis, at Laurelwood, and the 4500 square feet of exhibition space is packed with art.

In early 2014 the Gallery opened an outpost in Nashville in the happening Wedgewood/Houston Neighborhood.”

© 2014 David Lusk Gallery. Artist Tim Crowder and the Gallery retain sole copyright to the contributions to this book.

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