Scrap: Paintings by Michael Kareken |
By TAMATHA SOPINSKI PERLMAN
flying debris and dripping paint at the edges of the canvas.
Here, instead of documenting the endlessly shifting piles
of refuse as they mysteriously work their way in and out
of the facility, Kareken captured the operation’s noisy,
roiling movement and mass.
Alas! How little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
A piece of tape on the floor of Michael Kareken’s studio
indicates the distance from which visitors to the MAEP
gallery will first encounter his new epic oil painting, Scrap
Bottles. At 9-by-14 feet, the painting is intended to fill an
entire wall of a Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP)
gallery, essentially transforming it into a vertiginous cascade
of glass. The perspective is tilted forward, causing the illusion
that the pile of glass is falling into the viewer’s space, just as
the residue of human consumption spills into the painting’s
foreground. The viewer’s eye is unable to grasp a focal point
while it travels across the canvas gathering details of the
detritus—empty bottles bearing labels such as Newman’s
Own, Seagram’s, Grain Belt, and the shards and bits of glass
that did not survive the journey intact. The painting seems
in a constant state of transition. Dazzling reflections of light
boldly leap off of the canvas. With each step forward, the
viewer feels the form and mass of the bottles giving way to
the gesture and energy of Kareken’s brushstrokes.
“Scrap” is at once an ode to consumer culture and a
snapshot of society, with the garbage heap as the great
equalizer. Glistening beer bottles once advertised on
mammoth billboards now lie forgotten, their promise
consumed. Family dinners are conscribed to memory; only
their refuse remains. Reality trumps the dream in these
paintings, but there is something lovely in the cast-offs. In
Scrap Bottles, the surfaces of the glass create a kaleidoscope
of colored reflections. The fluctuations between form and
light push the rendering to the brink of abstraction.
“I’ve always liked how the images are forming and reforming
in paintings by artists like [John Singer] Sargent,” Kareken
said. “They are in flux; the painting captures gesture and
—Henry David Thoreau
“Scrap” provides an afterlife to human refuse. In a time
when “going green” is applauded and recycling is
unquestioned, Kareken offers a perspective that considers
the cycles of life, from the past to the future. “Scrap”
acknowledges the beauty and fragility of decay, and the
movement.” Like the Abstract Expressionist Willem de
Kooning, Kareken loves the gesture of the brushstroke but
is not interested in giving up the form. De Kooning’s 1950
portrait of New York, Excavation, offers a perfect example.
Half obscured in abstraction, but full of energy that pulls the
viewer across and around the canvas, the painting — in fact,
the very paint itself—is injected with the energy, grime, and
music of the city.
Scrap Bottles captures an era too, infused with anxiety
over the size and mass of a city’s cast-offs. The details are
engrossing and we can easily see the familiar forms of
bottles and brands emerge. “Its very democratic,” Kareken
said. “It naturally becomes a reflection of real life. Everyone
can see themselves in it.” But it is also disconcerting to
realize what people leave in their wake. The journeys of
our lives and our stuff march in endless circles of death and
rebirth. The painting is a city unto itself, a jumble of cultures,
trends, economics, consumption, and habit.
Other paintings in this exhibition evoke comparable
feelings of both melancholy and awe. Scrap Engines
(2009) is a curving terrain of bent and broken machine
parts, a monochromatic study of rust, metal, and mud. The
crunched metal, often reminiscent of bodies and limbs,
leaves a queasy feeling of a violent car crash. But within this
destruction there is beauty. Compressed Oil Drums (2009)
shows orderly stacks of cubes, each with a perfect circle on
its end faces. Shades of brown are punctuated by reds and
pinks, and a few stray circles lie in dirty water that shimmers
and ripples on the canvas. Kareken’s painterly strokes evoke
the Excavation paintings George Bellows made during the
building of New York City’s Penn station, which captured the
Michael Kareken, Compressed Oil Drums, 2009, oil on canvas, 68 x 84 inches
Michael Kareken, Scrap Bottles (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 108 x 168 inches
Cover: Magnet (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 96 x 78 inches
Flap: Scrap Engines (detail), 2009, oil on canvas, 84 x 96 inches
landscape of the Industrial Revolution. Both artists capture
the drama and stark splendor of a new American scene
in which the sublime is replaced by the artifacts of human
intervention.
Kareken’s studio window overlooks the Rock-Tenn recycling
plant, the comings and goings of which offer him a
distraction during long workdays. His earlier paintings in this
series are more intimate. Small, atmospheric landscape views,
such as the 12-by-30-inch Water Cannon: Paper Recycling
Plant (2007), suggest ties to the setting’s pastoral past.
Water Cannon likens the watery mist of a large firehose to
that of a waterfall in a Hudson River School painting, set
against a pile of paper instead of a mountainscape. These
calm paintings portray the piles of refuse as a natural part
of the environment. In River View: Metal Scrap Yard (2007)
a valley created between two scrap-metal hills opens onto
a scenic view of the Mississippi River with trees and a
house visible on the opposite bank. In these early paintings
Kareken was an outside observer. But as his relationship
with the subject deepened, his scale grew, he zoomed
in, and his brush loosened. Magnet (2009) is a mass of
swinging energy whose loosely painted heft dissolves into
transience of value. Everything moves on. From a distance
Kareken’s piles are anonymous. But up close, his details
reveal that human life is always changing, always shifting,
and continually surprising.
Tamatha Sopinski Perlman is the MAEP associate.
This exhibition is presented by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition
Program, an artist-run curatorial department of the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, which is made possible by generous support
from the Jerome Foundation.
Michael Kareken, Magnet Triptych, 2009, conte on mylar, 12 ½ x 27 inches each
Scrap
Paintings by Michael Kareken
Commuter
An installation by Tetsuya Yamada
November 20, 2009, to January 24, 2010
Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program Galleries
For more information about the artists, this
exhibition, and MAEP, visit:
Michael Kareken: michaelkareken.com
artsmia.org/maep
twitter.com/arts_maep
facebook.com/arts.maep
Opening Reception
Thursday, November 19, at 7 p.m.
Artist Talk
Thursday, December 17, at 7 p.m.
Critics’ Trialogue
Thursday, January 14, at 7 p.m.,
with Brenda Kayzar and David Lefkowitz
MINNESOTA ARTISTS EXHIBITION PROGRAM
ALL EVENTS ARE FREE, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC,
AND TAKE PLACE IN THE MAEP GALLERIES.
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404
www.artsmia.org