Due Diligence Done
Due Diligence Done: Brandon Anschultz & John Tallman
January 7, 2011 - January 30, 2011
Reception: Friday, January 7, 6 – 10pm
[ESSAY BY MATTHEW SEPIELLI]
PHILADELPHIA- Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce the opening of its January exhibition, Due Diligence Done, featuring the work of Brandon Anschultz and John Tallman.
From the essay by Matthew Seppielli:
“Through their versatile and exploratory bodies of work, certain qualities persistently emerge that unify these artists despite their unique practices. One of these is a simplicity, which in a sense, mutes the artist’s intentions.
In Brandon Anschultz’s paintings and other works, splotches of pure oil paint sit isolated on the backs of unprimed canvases, drying to an even vein that seems less like a declaration and more like an inevitability. Through a sly mixture of specificity and ambiguity, these works make one question whether they are beautiful accidents or highly orchestrated gestures.
John Tallman’s works raise a similar question for the viewer. Are these works, whose surfaces make use of synthetic pigments and materials, laboriously built to their final incarnations or are they again done through a system that replicates this labor? For Tallman who is equally at home displaying his works on gallery walls as well as on the sides of the trees that surround his home in Tennessee we are presented with a question as opposed to an answer when we ask.”
Brandon Anschultz received his BFA from Louisiana Tech University and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He has shown his work extensively, including recent solo shows at Laumeier Sculpture Park (St. Louis, MI), Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago, IL), and Space Contemporary Art (Santa Ana, CA). His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Taipei. He was recently featured in the September 2010 issue of Sculpture magazine.
John Tallman received his BFA from the Tyler School of Art and his MFA from the University of Washington. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at The Clough-Hanson Gallery (Memphis, TN), Green Line Art Projects (Philadelphia, PA) and the Abington Art Center (Jenkintown, PA). His work has been shown both nationally and internationally, including shows in New York, Sydney, Berlin, and South Korea.
Due Diligence Done - Essay
13 or More Ways of Looking at a Painting
In 1917 the American poet Wallace Stevens penned his now famous “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”. It was not the exercise in observation as the title might suggest but rather the poem uses the idea of a blackbird as a strand with which to unify the 13 stanzas of the poem. The rest of the poem’s language then builds upon this strand.
In the work of Brandon Anschultz and John Tallman the blackbird is painting. In their work the history and conventions of painting have been built upon, remolded, broken down and yet continually acknowledged.
Through their versatile and exploratory bodies of work, certain qualities persistently emerge that unify these artists despite their unique practices. One of these is a simplicity, which in a sense, mutes the artist’s intentions.
In Brandon Anschultz’s paintings and other works, splotches of pure oil paint sit isolated on the backs of unprimed canvases, drying to an even vein that seems less like a declaration and more like an inevitability. Through a sly mixture of specificity and ambiguity, these works make one question whether they are beautiful accidents or highly orchestrated gestures.
John Tallman’s works raise a similar question for the viewer. Are these works, whose surfaces make use of synthetic pigments and materials, laboriously built to their final incarnations or are they again done through a system that replicates this labor? For Tallman who is equally at home displaying his works on gallery walls as well as on the sides of the trees that surround his home in Tennessee we are presented with a question as opposed to an answer when we ask.
The material quality of both Anschultz and Tallman’s work asks another question: Are these works meant to seduce the viewer though their lush surfaces and colors, or are they meant to repulse?
Are the oily fields that emanate from Anschultz’s works ethereal glows or are they cruddy stains left merely as a by-product? It is hard to tell if these works quote the emanating light found in Italian Renaissance masterpieces or are more reminiscent of the later Italian movement, Arte Povera. In this debate, a point that seems well understood is that as works of art exist over time it is not so much their physical realities that change but more our perception of them. A parallel can be drawn here with the alchemical idea that has fascinated painters for generations: How does one take seemingly simple materials and fuse them to make things of beauty? How does our perception of work mutate from a simple reading to a complex one over time?
In Tallman’s work the question of repulsion versus seduction plays out in his material choice. Do his paintings with their bright, shiny, and yet synthetic materials seduce you in the way a new car might? Or do these works turn their back on an organic beauty that has attracted generations of artists looking to commune with what is natural and pure? The reality of Tallman’s works is that they do both, for while the material is synthetic the results are wholly organic. Sinuous lines cut through high key pigments on the painting’s surface and easily reference the grain found on old oaks or the labyrinthian currents found on a hillside after a heavy rainstorm.
Looking at much of contemporary painting, we are able to discern our thoughts quickly. Works often declare more than allude and offer an opinion rather than a dialogue. In the case of Brandon Anschultz and John Tallman’s work we are left with a series of questions rather than a series of answers.
The fifth stanza of the Wallace Steven’s poem mentioned at the outset reads:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
In Anschultz’s and Tallman’s works, as in Steven’s, we are not meant to answer the questions we are asked but rather to think through their ideas and then explore them for ourselves.
— Matthew Sepielli is a painter and member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid
