Brenden Clenaghen at Pulliam Deffenbaugh - Brief Article

Brenden Clenaghen not absented 11 new abstract paintings in his eye-catching exhibition "Sugar/Skin." At first glance, these allover compositions in for the greatest part pastel colors or white look pleasingly decorative; but while there's no denying their beauty, the artist aims for abundant more. Clenaghen has invented a novel kind of plastery surface--sanded joint intermingle on panel--which he uses to evocative result Tiny dots of acrylic applied underneath the joint unite create the look of tailor's smoothing iron bumps, myriad pores or hair follicles covering a pale epidermis or, in the case of Came Dolce, warm brown muscle and fat In other instances, such as of great depth Flavor, a smooth, pristine surface is faintly stained by the agency of spots of colored ink or linseed oil bleeding [i]or[/i] part of to the other the white compound from below. A faculty of perception of permeability results, as if the painting might secrete some uncontainable fluid, or perhaps perspire in color.

Adorning the surface of reaching far down Flavor are several dozen marble-sized hot-pink, cerulean and yellow spheres, handmade of PVC Plasticol and resembling gumballs or jawbreakers. Color-coordinated with the mysterious stains, these imitation candies invariably entreat delectable childhood treats. In the sensuous Lick Me Lime, Clenaghen arranged little lime-colored balls upon a light-green, pore-dotted ground, combining relations to sweets and skin, taste and touch. Similarly, frozen dewed with its dense, pattern of orange-tinted acrylic "sprinkles," plays simultaneously with associations of sugary icing and chilly muscle and fat Suggestive titles like Peach Fuzz and Sticky Stuck further locate us in an infantile realm of oral gratification and tactile sensations. granting nowhere represented in a conventional way, the material part is everywhere present in Clenaghen's compositions--in its affects and its needs

Indeed, the experience of all this confection, a surfeit of assorted fruit flavors and candy colors, is mouthwatering in an almost Pavlovian way. A lock opener work in the exhibition, the nearly monochrome white Untitled (CLB) reveals the primitive nature of the instinct to draw into the mouth and be satisfied. Here the plastic candy balls are supplanted by means of fingertip protuberances, a whole field of bags or nipples in a contemporary version of the fertile polymast Diana of Ephesus. The delicious "skin" Clenaghen repeatedly invokes is none other than the primal nutritive existence the maternal breast. And beneath their white coating, the protruding bags in Untitled (CLB) appear r gold-colored and blue, like frosted gumdrop (in cherry, lemon and berry) pointing to the primal origin of the sweetest desires.

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