Review of Jamie Bollenbach "The Amplitude of Time" by Dewitt Cheng

Noted Bay Area arts writer Dewitt Cheng has a nice capsule review of the show and more photos.

Jamie Bollenbach, "The Amplitude of Time," Noma Gallery

Those solemn reports of the death of painting (or art) that seem to recur every generation or so, prematurely, get no respect from Jamie Bollenbach. In an increasingly electronic contemporary world, the Seattle artist champions handicraft, the tradition of painting, and the creative struggle with and against a chosen medium, loved (“I like the juicy.”) but refractory. Working with models, he isolates certain elements that seem to extend themselves into surrounding space , perhaps like cubist planes or futurist lines of force; gradually the process, memory, imagination, and a host of other associations (history, politics, etc.) enter the work, sometimes completely obliterating the nudes beneath, but leaving a human presence in his tumultuous,  semi-abstract landscapes. Bollenbach: “My subject matter evolved from organic abstraction toward the exploration of transitory human presence, represented temporally in paintings as traces of light and color and gestural marks within a specific shape of space. I begin frequently from a live model. Elements of desolate, imagined landscape enter the work, pushing figuration to the edge of winking out—my version of the traditional symbol of the soap bubble as the fragility of life.” Also: “...Just standing in a a room is an amazingly complex system. And making art is a way to comprehend and express the mystery and wonder of a person just standing in a room probably better than other processes.” Artist talk Thursday, September 22, 6:00-8:00pm. Through October 15. Nomagallery.com.

P.S. The shameless publicity will continue for a while. Thanks, capitalism.  

PPS. Note hilarious photo of me refuting Berkeleyan idealism.