Painter captivated by how-to process
Most artworks arrive at a gallery completed, but not Stephanie Luening’s.
Last weekend, visitors to the latest exhibit at Hammond Harkins Galleries saw art in the making.
Ahead of (and during) the March 3 opening of "I Dream in Color," Luening placed two blank canvases — first one, then another — on the gallery floor. Hanging above were blocks of ice in different inkbased colors. As the ice melted at room temperature, the colors dribbled onto the canvases.
The sound of water hitting canvas suggested a leaky faucet, but the result was beautiful.
On one canvas, vivid splotches of cyan, magenta, yellow and black bleed into one another; spatters of color are also visible on its borders.
“It’s an unprimed canvas,” said Luening, a resident of Dresden, Germany, “so it really soaks up the color.”
With the ice melted, the canvases were complete. The first was hung on a gallery wall; the second will remain on the floor during the exhibit’s run to reinforce the process behind the work.
Luening based her color schemes on those found in existing images — excluding those images’ representational elements.
The first canvas — called “42nd Street & Broadway, NYC, USA” — was inspired by the colors in a photograph taken in New York by the artist; the second, by the colors in Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna.”
Luening, whose work has been exhibited just once previously in the United States, is more intrigued by the painting process than the final product.
“Not what you paint,” she said, “more how you paint.”
Luening’s works on paper are also intriguing — including the “Layers” series, with angular shapes in single colors. In one, shards of blue are interrupted with white spaces.
Included in the exhibit is another artist’s works, which seemingly make striking use of one color at a time.
The Yale Universitytrained Alteronce Gumby — introduced to central Ohio gallery-goers in the summer through a group exhibit at Hammond Harkins — paints pieces that appear to be rendered in one color but actually feature various hues.
The stark yet strangely tranquil “Albino Baby” showcases six variants of white, including beige and off-white; the moody “Blues for Smoke” features two sets of blue lines set against a background in darker shades of the color.
Most powerful is “Orlando Tragic” (whose title references the June 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida): Muddy streaks of orange and red dominate the piece — with thick gobs of paint covering its top section — but traces of pink, purple and other colors emerge underneath, lending a hopeful quality to a tempestuous painting.
Like Luening, Gumby uses color to communicate many moods and meanings.