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Tuesday, August 08, 2000
Recent works by Sue Chenoweth
August 2 to August 30
Burton Barr Central Library
1211 North Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85004
602-262-6372
A review by Kurt Joachim von Behrmann
If you want to know what is going on in the Visual Arts in the Valley and you only have time to visit a few places, then the Phoenix Central Library should be the first stop on your list. From the selection of artists the Burton Barr has chosen to show in the past, it is clear that they want their space to be taken seriously as a showcase for new and emerging artists. What this means is that you won’t see landscapes, decorative floral paintings or Southwestern paintings of the type you see filling, or polluting depending on your point of view, some of the galleries in Scottsdale. The focus here is on contemporary visual art.
Because this is a public space, and the Central Library, you won’t see the most controversial work made in the greater Phoenix area. Confrontational in your face art is not going to find a home here. What you will discover is a sampling of what is on the minds of the valley’s artists who have yet to hit the big time, but have managed to make something of a name for themselves on the local art circuit. Sue Chenoweth’s selection of paintings chosen for this outing fits perfectly with the tone the space is trying to set. Neither too cutting edge, or too safe, her works walk a fine line between the raw and the polished.
Using birch wood instead of canvas as a working surface, Chenoweth’s creations are colorful vibrant mazes of color. When you look closely at the swirls of paint, torn surfaces and dense applications of other assorted materials that make up her work, you can find a recognizable object here and there. In melting pot fashion, objects, colors, forms and raw surfaces pop up as if in a stew of liquid paint. Everything in her work is in constant turbulent motion. This feature is one of the common links to all of the work, along with their size, 48 by 48 inches.
Her most successful of the collection, and the most organized, is “Halo” This 1999 work features as a center piece a small fat male nude figure covered in only a fig leaf that conceals his private parts. He is also crucified to a cross. This kind of image is arresting on its own. It is made even more so by the colorful light treatment the artist has given the work. Bright pastel colors set against the natural color of the birch wood beneath lend the painting a decidedly bright upbeat look. No matter how light and free the painting appears, “Halo” begs some serious questions. Just why did she chose this figure, and exactly what is it intended to mean? You are not sure if she is making a comment on the church, or if the crucified fat man is present only to be shocking and nothing more than that.
It is when you look at her work closely that her art work begins to break down. Hoping to find some answers in her artist’s statement, displayed with the paintings, I was not expecting something this vague. After reading her statement for the fourth time, the intentions and meanings of her work and methods were just as fuzzy as they were the first time I read the document. Written in typical art speak, that difficult to decipher language where sounding impressive is more important than being understood, answers were still nowhere to be found amid her confusing text. Referencing the late great German philosopher Nietzsche did not add any more insight into what she was trying to accomplish.
The inability of the statement to communicate what the artist intended to convey illustrates one of the fundamental problems with the work, the difficulty the artist has with creating art that can communicate to the viewer. It is this inability that prevents her work from being more substantial, and in turn more easily understood. This is surprising considering that Chenoweth is an Educator.
The expectation with this kind of work is that something profound is going to be said and you just have to “get it.” If what she intended was to simply make colorful paintings and throw paint around on wood, then these questions would be mute. However, with titles such as “Blessed Destination Kick,” or “Articulate with Tongue Tied Tendencies” it becomes obvious that the artist is intending for her works to communicate more than the joy of painting. With so few clues offered by the works themselves, it becomes nearly impossible to figure out exactly what is being said, if anything at all beyond what you see is there. The frustration that the artist appears to have in finding the visual methods to convey her thoughts leave the viewer wanting more and receiving less. It is obvious from the work itself that she is trying to do more than produce paintings that are just pretty to look at.
Chenoweth’s works are basically acceptable, but they fall apart when you start to spend time with them. The mix of colors and forms start to become a jumble after a few viewings. You have a difficult time trying to figure out how everything falls into place. This is not helped by the fact that in some pieces the works look like they could stand more time in the studio and less time in the gallery. Considering the work over all, these are not bad works. In fact, they are some of the better paintings to be seen in recent times in the metro Phoenix area. Even if they are not terribly deep, or have a message, they are a step in the right direction, even if it is a clouded and muddled step at times.
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