Ray Yoshida at Adam Baumgold - Brief Article

Last autumn, gallery visitors in novel York City were given the rare treat of an exhibition of collages through the Chicago-based artist Ray Yoshida. Better known for his paintings and for teaching many of the Hairy Who at the academy of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yoshida has worked quite through the 1990s on an extensive series of cut-and-pasted paper works, his first involvement with collage since the late 1960s

Meticulous execution is a hallmark of the pieces shown all dated 1999 and ranging in size from 10 by means of 15 inches to 22 through 30; the edges are for a like reason sharp and adhesion so precise that viewers might mistake the works for colored drawings or lithographs. Each consists of horizontal files of bits cut from comics, sombrous or even completely unidentifiable details from figures and particulars Yoshida exploits the suggestive ambiguity of the shapes, presenting evocative fragments on the other hand never the whole image. The voids may be as important as the collaged pieces. Because his pictorial ultimate parts are both familiar and disembodied, they command searching attention from viewers. single senses a relationship between the elements; attempts to impose a narrative order create a tension that enlivens the work.

In Wheel single can pick out hair, shirt collars, pants slaps wooden ceilings and other assorted shards. They are fitted together like a pose with sharp and straight cutting sides aligned. Only one word appears in this and other compositions, a single reflection balloon of a nonsense word of the like kind as "Wheel" or "Owieee" that also supplies the title.

From a distance, the collages strike one as being nearly identical, but when they are approached separately, their individual character becomes evident. In Dang, elaborate pen s of drapery and heads of big hair, viewed from behind, are the predominant motifs. Each truncated uncompounded body sits on a clearly established horizon line, imparting a faculty of perception of calm to the composition. The viewer's organ of vision is led in an orderly fashion, file by row down the sheet. Foom is an exception, an eclectic array of irregular and jagged shapes that fan without leading the eye to zigzag back and forth across the composition.

The presentation recalls old-fashioned museum-case displays of realitys in which curiosities of all sorts are neatly assembled. end this format, Yoshida offers viewers the rewards and pleasures of looking and interpreting smooth the most abstracted constituents.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

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