We spend much of our time in rooms and buildings, in places that support the professional and social relationships that enable us to lead meaningful
lives. Our relationships with those buildings themselves are more
subtle, yet keen observers who have looked beyond their facades have
noted how the lives of structures sometimes parallel the lives of those
they shelter. This
Constructing Worlds expo features the work
of four painters who explore how buildings are situated not just on
streets, but also in our minds and imaginations where they function like
opera sets for our daily dramas even as they, over time, seem to take
on an inner life of their own.
The most intimate architectural spaces are our living quarters, but Belgian painter Pierre Bergian depicts elegant yet empty rooms that resonate faded grandeur, as we see in
The Blue Mirror, left, a derelict parlor with dusty paneling surrounding a massive mirror that rises to a vaulted ceiling. Bathed in soft, shimmering light, the mirror's eerie blue reflections evoke a tidal pool like a portal into lost memories. New York painter Jeff Goldenberg focuses on the rooftops of old, lower Manhattan buildings,
mostly desolate spaces studded with wooden water
towers that look like
old cisterns but are really functional plumbing reservoirs. In works
like
Printers Rollers, above right, they reflect the austere gothic geometry of an earlier age now lost amid the soaring architectural spectacles of our time. Maine painter Greta Van Campen applies a similarly stark style to America's homely modernity in
Red Square where a bleak commercial warehouse building is bisected by long shadows that lend it the surreal mystique of a latter-day DeChirico plaza painting. Architecture as a reflection of the inner lives of people and places is elucidated in Grover Mouton's collage paintings like
New Orleans, 1987, left, where Gallier Hall floats in a nimbus of gestural notations, or
House in Space, where a levitating old Greek Revival home recalls French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's maxim: “The house, even more than the landscape, is a psychic state... “ ~Bookhardt /
Constructing Worlds: Intersections of Art and Architecture, Through July 28,
Octavia Art Gallery, 454 Julia Street St., 309-4249.
towers that look like
old cisterns but are really functional plumbing reservoirs. In works
like Printers Rollers, above right, they reflect the austere gothic geometry of an earlier age now lost amid the soaring architectural spectacles of our time. Maine painter Greta Van Campen applies a similarly stark style to America's homely modernity in Red Square where a bleak commercial warehouse building is bisected by long shadows that lend it the surreal mystique of a latter-day DeChirico plaza painting. Architecture as a reflection of the inner lives of people and places is elucidated in Grover Mouton's collage paintings like New Orleans, 1987, left, where Gallier Hall floats in a nimbus of gestural notations, or House in Space, where a levitating old Greek Revival home recalls French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's maxim: “The house, even more than the landscape, is a psychic state... “ ~Bookhardt / Constructing Worlds: Intersections of Art and Architecture, Through July 28, Octavia Art Gallery, 454 Julia Street St., 309-4249.
