This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Nestled between large concrete office buildings and chain restaurants, Spruill Gallery is a small vestige of old Dunwoody located in a charming 19th-century house, complete with a front porch and a small garden with folk art and a picnic table.
The Spruill house is an appropriate setting for “In Light,” a two-person exhibition of paintings by Georgia artists InKyoung Chun and Steven L. Anderson. The disparity of the historic house set in a concrete landscape enhances the contrasts between tradition and innovation both artists bring to their work.
“In Light,” through Sept. 2, is a sympathetic pairing of two artists whose paintings address the subject matter of landscape and nature. The juxtaposition is an excellent choice not only for the artists’ intense and primal palettes but also for the conceptual emphasis in their representations of nature and landscape. Both artists’ works are pleasing to the eye and reflect on the history of landscape painting of the last century.
They both embrace modernism even as they distort and rupture it, giving their paintings just the right amount of edge. Chun and Anderson are artists whose particular languages of painting twist concepts of landscape painting with humor and playfulness, simultaneously reflecting back on the last century and fast-forwarding the viewer to a contemporary perspective on nature.
Credit: Deanna Sirlin
Credit: Deanna Sirlin
The delicacy of Chun’s intimate paintings is best appreciated up close. Her small-scale works are like encased jewels. Some are presented in plexiglass boxes that are as much part of the artworks as the paintings themselves — windows within windows within houses. As viewers, we look through and into these windows/paintings.
Chun’s touch is light and fluid. The oil paint in “House with Bouquet” (2019) is thinned to the level of watercolor. The paint is transparent and luminous. The brushstrokes are individual and painted directly onto the canvas, without a primer, a daring technique that gives the artist one chance to get the color and form correct.
The painted panel is set asymmetrically within the plexiglass box like a window for the viewer to see through. The humor in this placement is worth noting, since the viewer becomes complicit in this painterly dialogue of worlds within worlds.
Chun’s “Space with Tiny Blue Door” (2021) is a mountain view with oranges and other fruit dancing around the landscape. Chun is not just presenting a joyful landscape resembling Cezanne’s “Mont Sainte-Victoire” (1904-1906), however. She has ruptured her composition with a horizontal strip of unpainted canvas through the center of the landscape, making it clear that this is no modernist painting. This act is a tear in the fabric of modernism; Chun has broken the fourth wall.
Her large-scale work “An Idle Corner” (2023) is split approximately in half, like a diptych. The left-hand side uses hardware store materials — wooden slats, string lights, plywood and metal mesh — to depict the simple form of a house. Made onsite in the gallery, the work is rough and a new departure for the artist in its scale.
The right panel depicts an interior (possibly the artist’s studio) with a vase of flowers, a jar of brushes and blank paper in front of a window that looks out to a house and a verdant form. The interior objects are painted quite sparely but with an assertive touch. The window in this interior is lushly painted. There is something in the quality of the paint and the blue of the twilit sky that evokes the dream-like paintings of Chagall.
Credit: Deanna Sirlin
Credit: Deanna Sirlin
Anderson is best known for his drawings of tree rings made in marker and pen on paper. In this exhibition, he has taken a leap into the Southern landscape. The paintings are small and derive their richness from a nontraditional palette of hot pink, teal, lime green and black, colors not usually found in his drawings or in traditional landscape painting.
The works hover between abstraction and representation but are gleaned from intense examination of the botanical artifacts that give these works their penetrating beauty.
Hung in a grid are four small paintings. “Unidentified Willow #2,″ “Kentia belmoreana #3,” “European Ash” and “Kentia belmoreana #2” (all 2021) engage in an enchanting conversation with one another. Made in mixed media using watercolor, oil paint, ink, acrylic, marker, pigment crayon, spray paint and laser transfers, these works are absolute gems as a collection or individually. Their small scale draws the viewer in, rewarding close scrutiny with their intimacy and vibrancy of color.
Credit: Courtesy of Spruill Gallery
Credit: Courtesy of Spruill Gallery
A slightly larger work, “Unidentified Willow” (2021), is an image of a single, weeping tree and is perhaps the most romantic painting in the exhibition. The mixed media work has the succulent transparency of watercolor. The paint bleeds into the muslin surface; the dark leafless tree in the foreground overlays the atmospheric transferred image lurking in the background.
Both Anderson and Chun have broken new personal ground in these works at Spruill. Both artists have been honing their respective oeuvres for many years. Here, they are rebooted into new and effervescent languages of painting.
EXHIBIT REVIEW
“In Light”
Through Sept. 2. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays. Free. Spruill Gallery, 4681 Ashford Dunwoody Road, Atlanta. 770-394-4019, spruillarts.org.
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Deanna Sirlin is an artist and writer. She is known internationally for large-scale installations that have covered the sides of buildings from Atlanta to Venice, Italy. Her book, “She’s Got What It Takes: American Women Artists in Dialogue” (2013), is a critical yet intimate look at the lives and work of nine noted American women artists who have been personally important to Sirlin, based on conversations with each one.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.
If you have any questions about this partnership or others, please contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams at nicole.williams@ajc.com.
