At Buffalo Arts Studio, two artists making statements through trees
Ever since the immense storm that blew through Western New York in late 2006, the fallen trees of the region have been much on the minds of its citizens, including more than a few artists and curators.
REVIEW
WHAT: “David Schirm: From Then Until Now” and “Justin Thompson: Maybe It Runs In the Family”
WHEN: Through Nov. 1
WHERE: Buffalo Arts Studio, 2495 Main St.
TICKETS: Free
INFO: 833-4450 or www.buffaloartsstudio.org
Trees are, in a sense, one of the most flexible and attractive metaphors available to artists, who string their branches with all manner of statements about the environment, memory and human nature in general. Or — in the case of an intriguing pair of shows now on view at the Buffalo Arts Studio — all three. (For more tree-themed art, also see Rodney Taylor’s paintings at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in a show starting tonight.)
David Schirm
In the hands of longtime Buffalo oil painter David Schirm, former chair of the University at Buffalo Visual Studies Department, trees populate apocalyptic landscapes and become macabre stand-ins for tortured figures and their similarly tortured environment.
Schirm’s earlier work, described in 1993 by former News Critic Richard Huntington as “the apocalypse in a toy factory,” appears to have evolved into the apocalypse proper. His collection of eight paintings is like a scene study for a particularly disturbed science-fiction film, each piece containing small segments of a disturbing though elusive narrative.
The largest piece in the show, a 5-foot-long painting titled “Celebrating the Birth of. . .,” contains what look like a thousand mushroom clouds scattered over a scorched landscape, as viewed from outer space. Or they could be a legion of luminescent alien craft preparing for invasion (think “War of the Worlds”), or perhaps even a collection of ominous, conic cigarettes emitting wobbly smoke signals into the ether. Whatever Schirm’s intent, the effect is undeniably sinister.
The same goes for pieces like “Martyred Landscape,” which contains several anthropomorphic trees hemorrhaging all over the ground, and “Blood of the Waters,” in which the trees themselves seem to be spouts of blood sullying the ground near an ocean. The environmental overtones are clear enough here, and just as evident in the well executed “End of Days,” which features an iceberg helplessly surrounded by that telltale red blood. It brings a whole new meaning to “Arborgeddon.”
Curators Brooke Fitzpatrick (who chose the artists) and Cori Wolff (who chose the paintings) have created an ethereal narrative with Schirm’s work. But one painting, at least on first glance, seems not to fit. In “Dome of the Poet,” Schirm has painted something reminiscent of a children’s book illustration: a gigantic blue dome filled with whimsical snowflakelike puffs, accessed by a tiny door. On closer inspection, you realize the minuscule, igloolike entrance is painted deep red — the color used in the rest of Schirm’s pieces to connote destruction or malice. That tiny detail, subtly implying an interior in total chaos and furthermore directed by some mad poet, makes the piece perhaps the show’s slyest and most intriguing addition.
Justin Thompson
If Schirm’s trees disturb, those of Justin Thompson, an artist born in New York and now living in Florence, connote a certain kind of worn playfulness.
Thompson’s tree sculptures, modeled on the palms of his adopted home of Florence, are fashioned in metal and then sewn over with fabric from scores of old quilts. The first impression is of walking through one of Dr. Seuss’ otherworldly landscapes (“Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”), but soon takes on more urban notions. Thompson’s addition of a basketball backboard above one of the trees, as well as pedestals printed with musical notes and advertising slogans that seem to have come from torn-down buildings, add to the sense that Thompson is shooting for a kind of whimsical city-scape.
The quilts Thompson uses to surround the languid, often drooping fronds of the metal palm trees seem to have been attached without regard — except in a couple of cases — to color or pattern. Their second-hand nature means that Thompson has in effect dressed his trees with patchwork memories of a past time, pieces of worn cloth that may symbolize anything from struggle to contentment.
Along the back wall, in a wise placement, is Thompson’s most playful tree, set on the ground and chilling out with its back to the wall, like a leaning human figure. This sets viewers up for the infinitely more disturbing work of Schirm, for whom the tree symbolizes something entirely different.•
