"Peeled Paintings"

Peeled Paintings, Robert Tavani
Grid Furnishings, 944 N High St, Columbus, Ohio
August 4 – October 31, 2013

In Columbus, Ohio the first Saturday of every month is Gallery Hop. Art spaces in the Short North stay open into the evening. Some spaces are galleries in the traditional sense while others have incorporated galleries into other businesses. One such establishment is Grid Furnishings. Contemporary art goes nicely with the highly designed furniture in the showroom.

Currently Robert Tavani’s paintings are hanging on the walls at Grid. When I first saw Tavani’s Peeled Paintings, I couldn’t figure out what why they seemed so different than other paintings with color fields. It finally hit me that although they are obviously layered, the surface is smooth, almost glassy. It didn’t seem like it should be possible, but Tavani was kind enough to explain his process in the statement with the show. He works with acrylic paint on a clear support, peeling and adding layers and then observing changes through the clear substrate from the back of the painting. When he is finished, the back becomes the front and he removes the entire painting from the clear support and mounts it on canvas. The effect is similar to collage, while the smoothness of the surface unifies the many shaped layers into one.

Tavani strives to transform base materials, showing something familiar in a different light. The trace of the artist’s hand is preserved through the brushstrokes and jagged edges of shapes. The work maintains a very physical presence despite the glossy smoothness of the surface. What has obviously been painted almost appears manufactured because of the pristine finish.

L.E.E.K. I (2012), like most paintings on display, has no clear subject. The colors and shapes are given spotlight. There appears to have been some writing, but enough has been removed that only a few stray words remain. Here the transformation is nearly limited to the materials. There is a lingering sense that something was previously here, but the viewer is left to determine what it might have been. The tracks have been scrubbed clean since we are only left with the smooth reverse side while the side the artist worked from is fixed to the canvas.

Bouquet (2013) is the most clearly representational of the works. Tavani has transformed the subject matter as well as the paint. The blooms, stems, and vase appear to be flattened onto the same surface as the collaged swaths of paint. Instead of the cubist notion of viewing all sides at once, here all sides have become one; the bouquet seems to have been launched onto a slide like subatomic particles in an experiment at CERN. The elements of the floral arrangement exist, but no longer in their natural state. The colored paper of the wrappings takes the foreground amidst a field of blossoms, reversing the usual hierarchy. A recognizable, usually peaceful element, element of still lives is infused with chaos.

While Tavani has not turned the world of painting on its head, he has managed to find a way to keep paintings on canvas fresh. They weren’t created on canvas, but exist that way now. Something new retrofitted onto something old creates a space just weird enough to linger.

                        Brett Barton