Mirror: A Group Show
The group show, Mirror, is located at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, Heritage Community Park and is on view from January 29 to April 16, 2022.
It explores ideas of ambivalence and fragmentation through the artists’ personal experience and narratives. The works push the viewer to contemplate the boundaries of real and imagined and private and social thresholds.
Gretchen Batcheller’s work fuses realism techniques with fantastical landscapes. She also uses graphic elements that allude to animation in some ways. My favorite from the show was “Live Action” made with oil and airbrush on canvas. It features two beautifully depicted figures that blend into the sky and onto the ground underneath them. The jewel-like colors took me in and the faithful rendition of light on the subjects against the graphic atmosphere forced me to stay.
Live Action, 2021 airbrush and oil on canvas 40”x30”
Perin Mahler’s paintings transport the viewer into an elaborate hybrid space with unfolding chaos and subdued moments. His piece, “Satisfied”, moves from structural architecture to an overwhelming tumble of gift boxes engulfing a figure onto foliage leading to an atmospheric inferno revealing a skeletal architecture. Its multiplicity favors the piece, unified by how he composed the image and traveled specific colors across the canvas. The painting has incredible movement as it implodes and constructs simultaneously. The delicacy in which the atmosphere, foliage, and figure were painted against the solidly rigid gift boxes and staircase express a search for balance within disarray.
Satisfied, 2022 oil on canvas
I was also intensely drawn to the painting, “Dissociated”, which presents a more severe hybrid space where upside-down imagery of multiple heads in a crowd serves as its ground plane. This alludes to some sort of instability. I took this as a metaphor for inverted thinking or another layer of chaos in an already tumultuous piece. The unfurled books disrupting the image of the figure hint at ideas of subversion or even being engrossed in an introspective task; meanwhile, the buildings burn in the background. In the currently dystopian world, it feels as though the work begs the question of the population’s response to the chaos and how they are dealing with it.
Dissociated, 2021 oil on canvas
Lastly, Kaitlynn Redell’s pieces evoke an emotional response to the viewer as she finds a balance between two-dimensional drawing and three-dimensional sculpted clay forming words. Her work expresses “in-betweenness and how ‘unidentifiable’ bodies—that do not identify with standard categories—negotiate identity.”
Ultimately, the group show highlighted work that urges the viewer to think about reality and imagination while finding the boundaries between personal and social. It was an incredible experience to marvel at the artwork in person to feel its profound effects psychologically while admiring its aesthetic quality. A profoundly inspiring and insightful show, Mirror is exceptionally worthwhile.