Click here for Gayle Clemans' review of neonoir in the Seattle Times

Click here for Jen Graves' write-up of neonoir in the Stranger

Click here for Regina Hackett's review of neonoir in the Seattle PI


neonoir
Curated by Cameron Martin
Dike Blair, Michael Byron, Judith Eisler, Wayne Gonzales, Angelina Gualdoni ,George Rush, Helen Sadler

August 9 - September 22, 2007
Opening Reception: August 9, 6 - 8 pm
Curator Talk: August 11, 12 pm


Curator's Statement

The impulse to curate this show originally stemmed from an overlap I recognized in my attraction to both noir film and its visual qualities in certain types of contemporary painting. In addition to being the French word for the color black, the American Heritage Dictionary defines noir as “of or relating to a genre of literature and/or film featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings”, and “suggestive of danger or violence”. In thinking further about my predilection for contemporary artists who employ noir characteristics in their work, I realized that what is evoked in their imagery is a particular interpretive effect, one that I would argue is distinct from noir's original intent.

In her essay, “The Phenomenal Nonphenomenal: Private Space in Film Noir”, Joan Copjec proposes that “the inversion that defines the shift from classical detection to film noir is to be understood not in terms of identification but in terms of choice between sense and being, or-in the dialect of psychoanalysis-between desire and drive” . Contemporary use of the noir sensibility plays on multiple levels of nostalgia, not the least of which is the yearning for a moment in time prior to culture overcome by drive. Noir film set out to depict the prospect of certain cases in which drive overtook the ability to keep desire restrained. In today's world of unprovoked war, rampant government scandal, corporate collusion, and individualism that prioritizes ease over long-term sustainability, the notion of desire kept in check can seem quaint. Current uses of noir imagery conjure an implicit affection for the normative backdrop against which such behavior is made to seem aberrant.

There have been many forays into how noir might play out in the future. What I am more interested in with the work in this exhibition is how artists use the lens of this specific visual vocabulary to depict our present psychological state. It is perhaps the reluctant acceptance of a world driven by amoral forces that makes one want to reconsider the role of an image-style once used to depict society's supposed underbelly. For me, the contemporary noir image can highlight a new kind of sublimity, in which our fear of an identifiable moral lapse is charged with a longing for the belief that such a thing exists. Painting, with what some would call its outdated insistence on singularity, the importance of the maker, and the relevance of emotional content, is perhaps the perfect platform on which to articulate this sense of subjective disenchantment.

The artists included in the exhibition engage pathos, but with calculated remove. In some cases, a literal veil serves as a device to call out the space between viewer and image. The clearest example is provided in the still-life paintings of Michael Byron. These images of iconic sculpture, the quintessence of the fetishized commodity, are carefully rendered in a grisaille reminiscent of black and white photography. Cathexis is kept at bay by a filter of what looks to be bubbling liquid, as if the picture is submerged and on the verge of corrosion. Another type of screen is employed in the work of Wayne Gonzales, to different effect. Benday dot pattern, evocative of print media and Pop Art, is used to create a relationship based on distance. These images of locations of power only come fully into focus from a long view. As we gain proximity to the picture, it becomes increasingly impossible to locate what we thought we once knew to be the image, suggestive of our conditioned disassociation from centers of control.

The characters in Judith Eisler's paintings wear another type of mask. The distortion of the video stills they are taken from abets their cool haziness and sensuous seediness. Her subjects display composure that verges on indifference. Helen Sadler's diminutive portraits on the other hand show people in ambiguous states of possible ecstasy, horror or rage. Reason taken over by impulse, the subjects of these paintings are “outside of themselves”, on the precipice of lurid lack of control.

Dike Blair's nocturnal parking lot gouaches carry an empty beauty and propose latent vulnerability. Innocuous destinations or sites for illicit activity, these compellingly eerie images evoke the potential for the banal to turn macabre. Another take on the nocturne is proposed in George Rush's silhouettes of looming metropolitan high-rise buildings. The imposing anonymity of these structures is emblematic of architecture's potentially chilling psychic effect. Angelina Gualdoni's exteriors however, are almost redolent with the details of industry's leftovers. The toxic skies and stained asphalt in these abandoned, blighted locations document our baneful, indelible imprint.

In true noir fashion, though often dark in palette and theme, the paintings in this grouping make no bones about being seductive. Made with conviction and caring, they intend to keep us rapt with their handsome sophistication, while evincing our thwarted nostalgic cravings and the disaffection that can stem from attraction.


Cameron Martin


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Joan Copjec ed, Shades of Noir, Verso, 1993, pg. 182