Her intelligent paintings are works of 'genius'
Joan Snyder's paintings, sometimes deep and dark, sometimes glittering and joyful, often feel unfettered, as if all her inner censors have stepped aside to let the paint wash on through.
The artist, who has a show up at Nielsen Gallery, last year won a MacArthur "genius" grant. Cue the glitter and joy. Snyder, 68, is a bit of an odd duck to tap for a major award. Not that she doesn't deserve it. Her paintings don't merely gush; they have a bristling intelligence. But she's essentially an Abstract Expressionist with a feminist agenda; in many ways, a creature of another era.
She overcomes that hurdle with layered, complex works that have immediacy and depth. They're not exactly subtle; they crash into you like a wave. But Snyder's a master with color and a daredevil with texture and materials, and the result is thrilling.
In this show, she brings elements from earlier paintings together: drifting circles that reference breasts; glistening black ponds ringed by rugged papier mâché, and other suggestions of landscape; long, languorous horizontal brushstrokes. Then there are occasional spots of text, like an invocation. And the use of wild materials. It's like a symphony's final passage, approaching the crescendo, when all the earlier melodies weave miraculously together.
Look at "Sky," painted in oil and acrylic on linen, with burlap, silk, flowers, soil, pastel, and beads. There's something almost shamanistic about Snyder's earthy materials, as if she's bringing them together for a ritual.
The black pond, spattered with paint drops, anchors the work near the center; there's a sense that all springs from and returns to this dark source. Large, gritty, built-up passages of soil cross the painting, a counterpoint to sweet drips and dollops of periwinkle and red. Here and there, yellow smears over the surface like raw egg yolk. Pockets of silk affixed to the linen hold beads like magic seeds from a fairy tale, and the stalks of flowers stretch in horizontals, their dried petals tipped in red paint like so many lipstick kisses over the painting's surface.
"Ode and Joy" reads like a slurpy valentine. Those breast-like circles, red and mixed with a medium that glistens, could be lollipops, hovering on a creamy field blushing with other tones and dribbled over with dancing skeins of paint. The sense, as with most of Snyder's paintings, is one of release and surrender. Sometimes it's into grief, and sometimes it's into creation or exultation. Her works embody letting go, something we all need to do sometimes.
Papier mâché to paper
The young sculptor and draftsman Kevin Hooyman's fey, delightful works at Proof tap into a mythological imagination of magic and adventure: In them, Tintin meets Frodo, and the two join forces with James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo.
Step into the gallery and you're greeted by "Clark," an almost 6-foot-tall papier mâché fellow in a medieval tunic, painted in sweet pastel tones. He has the snout of a dog, bandaged up, and the body of a man, with giant, sky-blue mittens. Part warrior, part faithful companion, he looks like a 6-year-old boy's art project blown up to huge proportions. Another sculpture, "Horton," is no elephant, although there's a Seussian streak to these figures. The flesh is pink and awkward, the pose seductive, the loincloth turquoise, the proboscis yellow and pink; in short, "Horton," as adult-sized as "Clark," is endearing and ridiculous.
Hooyman's drawings sport the same pale colors and odd, almost human figures, but they're marvels of detail. The artist evokes deep forests, which his characters make their way through with some peril, and with such detail the viewer could spend a long time finding all the critters in just one.
An unmatched trio
Curator Gilles Daigneault has brought together three Quebecois artists for three installations at GASP. It's a great use of the gallery's space; larger group shows can feel crowded here.
The works don't have much in common. The best is Catherine Bolduc's "My Life Without Gravity (Ikea version)," featuring one of Ikea's do-it-yourself armoires in a darkened room. Bolduc has drilled it randomly with holes and loaded it with a glaring strobe light and audio that might be fireworks, crackling thunder, or mortar fire. It's like Arma-geddon, but comically contained inside the cheap-and-dirty armoire.
Danielle Sauvé, who lives in Cambridge, considers what home means to an immigrant in "Promises (Welcomes)," three canvas shelters mounted on scaffolds in the gallery's courtyard. She has cut the walls into ribbons and cut out words, in English, French, and Spanish, such as "delicate situation." The structures are more intriguing than the text; they imply shelter, but don't actually provide it.
"Shedding and Dust," Louise Viger's installation, looks like an altar: A large, black-robed figure, looking a bit like a scarecrow, looms over an array of small vases stuffed with soot, like snuffed votive candles. Colored lint decorates the black robe. There's a bleak, ashes-to-ashes feeling to this piece, but I don't think it achieves the falling away that Viger's title suggests; its bleakness is far too substantial to molt. 