The large drawing from Oresky's A Wildness of Edges
Last Wednesday I visited Chicago’s West Loop to check out Melissa Oresky and Eric Lebofsky’s solo shows at Western Exhibitions.
Clustered together on one wall, like color studies for a composition class are sixteen 15×22″ works of Melissa Oresky’s A Wildness of Edges, on display at Western Exhibitions’ Gallery One space. Far away, the pieces read more vivid and fluid, evolving into small-sized architectural landscapes. Close up the heavy evidence of brushstroke creates directional lines.
The work includes variations on saturation, from light washes of acrylic paint to thick, opaque geometric paper pieces that add to the collage, three-dimensional quality of the work. The canvases aren’t completely covered with gesso either- the natural, unbleached canvas fiber shows through completely or lightly washed with color in some areas. This builds an organic landscape in which the geometric collage pieces perch atop, forming small-scale models for futuristic pod-like buildings.
The lone large piece on an opposing wall offers small, detailed doodles done with a fine-tip brush, that along with the overabundance of geometric shapes and color tones ranging from neons to pastels, detract from the overall composition and fluidity of the piece. The eye jumps from cluster to cluster more quickly than in the smaller pieces, where the shapes stretch and expand from the canvas in their more scant environments.
"The Practicer" from Lebofsky's Superfreaks exhibition
Gallery Two includes Eric Lebofsky’s one wall of 30 highly imaginative, humorous portrait drawings of men, women, and undefined beings entitled Superfreaks. Lebofsky’s portraits function better than Oresky’s do when in close proximity to one another. Why? The illustrations, done in ink and colored pencil are highly detailed, appearing as pages from a wonton comic book chock full of antiheroes and slapstick visual representations of words and phrases.
Whether it’s the three-eyed, vagina-mouthed “Writer”, a colorfully armored blank-faced Allen Ginsberg, or “The Practicer”, a man with a receding hairline who wears a blue tank top and sports a face shaped like a guitar (who has “become one with his instrument”, but humorously cannot reach the fret board), Lebofsky’s come up with a character each viewer can somehow relate to.
Interested in catching more witty Lebofsky drawings on a daily basis? Check out his blog by clicking the picture below to see a new drawing every day until August of 2010, when WesternXeditions will publish a book reproducing the blog’s collection.
Here's today's latest drawing from the Superfreaks blog.
