First of all, I said that I'd follow up with my review of Ari Fish's installation at La Esquina. Well, I tried to see it last Sunday, (suffering with a monstrous cold), and it was closed, despite the fact that it was supposed to be open! Grr. There's too much to see and do in the world, so we're moving on.
Here's my review, in the Kansas City Star, of Kansas City artist Marilyn Mahoney's work at Avila University's petite and nicely appointed Thornhill Gallery. It's a really nice space; great for intimate works.
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| Arthur's Turn |
Artist Marilyn Mahoney’s ‘Cinematic’ has tiny details, grand scope
Drawings shine in a midcareer exhibit of her work at the Thornhill Gallery.
If a body in motion tends to stay in motion, then Marilyn Mahoney’s drawings are images of perpetual kinesis.
Trusses, bridges, and other architectural fragments are the vehicles by which the midcareer Kansas City artist examines perspective, spatial relationships, abstraction, and underlying themes of dance, cinema, and memory.
The show in the Thornhill Gallery at Avila University has an enigmatic title, “Cinematic.” In its broadest definition, the name aptly conveys the essence of the work. Its scope is grand, yet Mahoney manipulates the most minute details with precision and dramatic flair.
By drawing, painting, and cutting on Mylar and paper in shades of gray, cream, black and rust, Mahoney designs and manipulates elements that dissolve from one thing to the next, suggesting contradictory notions of movement and immobility.
Everything can be seen in flux.
Out of the 14 works, two are traditional paintings on canvas while the rest are layered drawings on Mylar and paper. While the paintings are accomplished, it’s in the drawings that Mahoney really shines.
Interestingly, Mahoney cajoles more movement from her acutely precise, hand-cut shapes layered upon one another and manipulated with paint and graphite than she does from the relative freedom of acrylic paint. As illogical as it sounds, the paintings seem a bit staid by comparison. In “Scrimshaw — Truss,” those trusses feel stubbornly anchored to the striped background.
The paintings lack the drawings’ freedom.
“Licorice Twist,” the largest work on paper is, among all the works, the most bewitching. It is precise, lyrical, and shot through with dazzling choreography.
The drawing is a cross between an abstracted, elegant pavilion and a whirling dervish. Mahoney said it was influenced by her mother’s dancing pirouettes. Because the forms float unencumbered on the paper, the entire composition, with its sinuous curves and arching protrusions, feels changeable, unpredictable and cinematic.
In “South Pacific-Horizon,” Mahoney strips down to the basic elements that she embraces in all of her drawings. Here two nestling, recumbent trusses cut a sharp line through the ether.
Mahoney’s individual drawing components exist in a geometry of spatial relationships to one another and to the picture plane. At times the trusses and images coalesce into an abstracted object; they suggest a building or an architectural fragment, and at other times, the drawings exist in almost pure abstraction.
Mahoney meticulously investigates the push and pull of perspective in all of the work. She delves only into surface appearances in some drawings and in others she digs through layers and unearths spatial ambiguities. Even her earthy color choices imply the archeology of accretions.
In “Arthur’s Turn,” thick layers of trusses and sharp angles create a chaotic field that seems impenetrable.
In Mahoney’s abstracted choreography there is no movement without quiet and no quiet without some movement. Something is always stirring, or about to become.
The exhibition’s title, “Cinematic,” launches and summarizes this body of work. Mahoney leads us through stages of stability and instability, close-ups and long shots, as she pans across sections of changeable architectural fragments.
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