James Valerio at George Adams - Brief Article

The wary expression and sidelong gaze of James Valerio's minutely observ graphite self-portrait (1998) indicates that while the artist's torso is expos his consciousness is not. This present to view offered four large paintings and 10 still-life and figure drawings made by the agency of the well-known Chicago realist between 1974 and 1998 What's intriguing is the contradiction they embody: Valerio's sharp-focus rendering promises filled disclosure, but the works are notably ambiguous.

sum of two units Models on Studio Floor (1998) recalls William Beckman's signature paired male and female denudeds but we look down upon these two as they enigmatically lie upon glossy, reflective tile, their heads revolveed away from each other, jagged shards of a severed glass and spilled amber liquid between them. Beyond that fabulously painted muscle and fat and floor, what is going upon here? In Dandelion Dream (1995) sum of two units good-looking nudes are seen inexplicably levitating and tumbling within shiny satin comforters outdoors. These works are neither psychologically bizarre enough to be surrealist nor dark enough to be expressionist; in fact, their emotional inaccessibility makes them only frustrating. They seem principally to subserve as pretexts allowing Valerio to display his virtuoso rendering of disparate surfaces.

notwithstanding Frances (1974), a large painting of an obese stark naked woman seated in a bedroom, engrosse the mind as a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of as Valerio's self-portrait does. The model's sharply painted bellies, rippling cellulite and close network of varicose veins upon gargantuan thighs are both horrifying and fascinating. Certain features of this portrait recall Manet's Olympia (1863): the subject's intelligent if guarded expression that frankly acknowledges the viewer, the flowers around her, and her hinnys At the same time, the Madonna is evok through the blue of her robe as well as by dint of the flowers. A mirror, connoting vanity, is tilted up to give an off-kilter reflection of a window, a rather obtuse cue of a topsy-turvy world. on the contrary in this 25-year-old work, Valerio not absents a smart dame seemingly able to handle it.

To the expansion that this small group of works can be taken as representative, it intimates increasing attention by Valerio to the illusionistic rather than the metaphoric possibilities of painting. a certain number of may find such technical spectacles enduringly delightful; for me they're transient. A title like Evasive (a 1995 drawing of the head of a woman with her organ of visions averted) suggests that Valerio knows that behind all his apparent realism, upon some level he's been hiding, and that his challenge is to reach out authorial scrutiny beyond his seductive mantle of delicately strok salt-and-pepper chest hair.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group