This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 11, 2012 - The Bruno David Gallery announced that the artists exhibiting their work in Blue – White – Red would be restrained by the limited palette. It also asked the artists to stay away from the political pairings these colors connote, undoing that association so that they could get to the “very essence of the three colors.”
Artists often do not do what they are told. If the current exhibit can be used as evidence for an artist’s disposition, they appear to comply only contrary-wise.
The main gallery image shown prominently on the gallery website shows the obedient artists. Joan Hall’s work fits the theme. Her sea-blue paper formed with help from the ocean itself lays beneath a rope with a sailor’s knot in Johnson’s Bayou; her White Net looks as if it just gathered the shells from a dream you once had. Once you’ve seen a Joan Hall you will always know (and enjoy) her work.
Wend your way through the three gallery rooms; and it becomes clear that red is also pink and orange, add blue and you have purple until color is made free and the artists have taken over the spectrum of what is usually available. As artists are often at their best when they transgress, we might assume that Bruno David intended his chromatic-censure as an artful muse. Whatever the intent, the theme brings us more works from many artists we often see in this space.
Among the decidedly disobedient, Patricia Olynyk gives us light boxes that are frightfully, but delightfully, irreverent. Titled, The Cold Open, these two objets d’art display anatomy textbook illustrations: one of a man, one of a woman. The figures shown gaze directly at the onlooker as their bodies are opened for the sake of the lesson, a lesson that apparently takes place as birds look on and flowers entangle their body parts.
It is likely that many Bruno David Gallery visitors miss the New Media Corner. A black tunnel leads to a TV monitor offering a video contemplation. This time two US flags billow (no politics Bruno David?) as their colors shift and suggest, possibly, a rainbow nation? A fitting image, for if these incorrigible artists have their way, a rainbow nation we will surely be.