Large touring show at OCU may overwhelm
It’s easy to be a little overwhelmed by a touring show of “The Secret Paintings,” in oil, of English artist Michael J. Pearce — some of them very large indeed.
The exhibit is on view through Oct. 20 in the Norick Art Center, 1609 NW 16, at Oklahoma City University.
Offering us an almost alchemical mixture of hidden meanings, modern yet archaic symbolism, and meticulous, in some cases masterful technique, the exhibit offers us both visual stimulation and food for thought.
In one forceful image, the precarious nature of “Justice” is personified by a blindfolded woman in a white robe, standing on a golden circle over cracking ice, with pricked and bleeding hands and a long sword on her back.
Much larger, and highly ambiguous, is a 108-by-60-inch diptych of the “Endless War” between a modern looking man and woman, dueling with not very deadly looking sticks, in a poppy field threatened by fire under a golden orb.
Very ambiguous, too, is his 81-by97-inch oil of a barefoot “Magician,” wearing black-and-white stripes, brandishing a wand over a flaming bowl, perhaps for our benefit, but doing it in a desolate “valley of death” landscape.
Largest of all, and most ambitious, is his giant frieze of female figures in front of dark trees and sunlit fields, representing the four seasons, on four concave, side-by-side panels, each measuring 62 by 96 inches.
Eye-catching imagery in this seasonal frieze, includes a bride reacting to a snake about to strike her ankle, a pregnant woman holding her back for support, a redhead about to cut her long hair and winter figures in deep blue.
Offering a powerful meditation on the modern yet timeless nature of romance is “I Think I Love You,” a large oil in which two young women and a young man consult their cellphones on a rugged green horizontal landscape.
Hung vertically, but no less forceful, is “The Tower,” a large oil of John the Baptist baptizing Christ by channeling a beam of light from above, with both of their gesturing figures emerging from
dark waters into our field of vision dramatically.
Among excellent, slightly smaller vertical works, are oils of a “Hanged Man,” reaching toward an inscribed stone as he falls with a rope around one leg, rather than his neck, and of three witches in striped, clown-like garments.
There is something a little kitsch and charmingly cheesy about his oil of a young woman in a striped outfit reaching out in the starry night sky to grab our planet because “I Want the World and I Want It Now.”
More simplistic and reminiscent of trick photography, by contrast, is his mostly black-and-white oil of a person whose wildly exaggerated arm gesture seems to be transforming him or her into a devil figure.
The exhibit is highly recommended in the rest of its run at OCU.
— John Brandenburg,
for The Oklahoman