More Top Picks Meepo V5
player ready...Ben Mahmoud’s acrylic paintings are complex, dense compositions that push the viewer to make meaning of his realistic, flatly painted still lifes. To these Mahmoud adds Latin and Sanskrit text, Latin titles and sometimes extraneously placed objects such as hands, puppetlike figures and clothing. Eerie backgrounds add to the intellectual challenge of making sense of all this material. At the same time, the paintings have a great visual and compositional impact. In “Casus Error Astudus Est” (Chance is a Cunning Illusion), a group of apples are elegantly portrayed at different stages of consumption, along with Tarot cards. In “Simulare Videre Manus” (Pretending to See a Hand), a cored apple is depicted with patterns for clothing, a hand in blue and an angel. The apple, which frequently appears in his works, is a metaphor for the Garden of Eden, as well as a paradigm of the death that awaits each of us, says Mahmoud, a painting teacher at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. The exhibit continues at the Sonia Zaks Gallery, 311 W. Superior St., until Oct. 14.
Stephen Coyle’s spare, alkyd-on-linen narrative paintings have a bewitching stillness, heightened by the Boston artist’s choice of everyday subject matter and his titles. Coyle takes a snapshot of daily life but adds a layer of mystery. A phone sits waiting to be used atop a vacant white bed in a work titled “Your Mom Called.” In “Long Distance,” the receiver dangles over the side of a pieced quilt, both atop a very neatly made bed. In “Iron,” a garishly pink ironing board is shown, but there are no clothing and no steam, and in still another, “Two A.M.,” another phone is left off the hook and a long cord dangles. Which comes first — the object or its deeper meaning? Coyle says the phone paintings, which number approximately 15, started with a simple act. His mother-in-law had visited and placed a bedroom phone on the adjacent bed. “I had a revelation when I saw that image. I came to view the phone as a primary means to connect in a relationship.” The show continues until Oct. 30 at Gwenda Jay Gallery, 704 N. Wells St. Also on exhibit until Nov. 1 are monotypes on paper by contemporary artists such as Eric Fischl and Sam Francis.
Santa Fe artist Michael Kessler’s romantic acrylic on panel paintings are interesting in their technique. They are made by letting paint pool, using a squeegee-type tool to spread it across a canvas and scraping through. The result is an arresting dichotomy between shiny fluid veiled layers of mostly somber hues and crisp black architectural shapes that add a startling air of stability and reality. In some paintings, a form that resembles a tree branch winds through. In others, with a more muted palette, these organic forms dominate, giving the panels an Oriental elegance. The exhibit continues through Oct. 11 at Klein Art Works, 400 N. Morgan St.