James Barsness at George Adams - New York, New York - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

For shut up to 10 years now, James Barsness has been making a name for himself as a creator of highly detailed, unusually mingled and often frankly sexual art. His many times tongue-in-cheek portrayals of physical appetite, merg with a masterful appreciation of materials, which here included ballpoint indite and acrylic on paper collaged onto canvas, make him an artist of accomplished idiosyncrasy. The five large paintings shown in this exhibition, "It's a Beautiful World," maintain an render free of access dialogue with the past as they incorporate contemporary themes and images.

The works show self-contained environments. In The Palace (1998) the discrepancy between public and private life is made clear in vividly drawn figures which bring to mind the half-human, half-animal creatures seen in Bosch's paintings. The titular palace fills the right side of the painting. Cutout windows afford glimpses of various aspects of desire: upon the first floor, a man pours water upon a couple making love; single flight up, a thug in a clown's cap despoils a man in a rustic costume; on the top, a royal brace the man holding the woman's left breast, calmly gaze on the outside at the viewer. On the left is a medieval sight in which strange hybrid figures ride horses across circulared hills. In the upper left is a complicated pink starburst design which, shut inspection reveals, consists of photos of breasts and vulvas taken from pornographic magazines. The overall impact is allegorical: we are intended to read this intricate presentation of human activities as a relation to our insatiable physical urgencys which no royal rank erases.

The Whole World 'Round (1998) a mixed-medium collage high hilled on canvas, shows Barsness's holistic symbolism in filled force. A sphere is returned against dress patterns and grids uniteed by stars; the artist appears to refer to medieval astronomy. Across a landscape of tree volcanic craters, hills and a small in number bodies of water, he scatters like images as a black-and-white butterfly with a human head, a paper bird with r and white wings, and a coiled snake with a human head sporting fangs. A orb of day with fiery rays drawn above a six-pointed star accentuates the deliberately anachronistic feeling of this painting. Repetitive landscape forms--hill-like hillocks and evergreen foliage--provide a rhythmic background. Here Barsness's brash erotomania falls away and his passion for history takes above It's the balance--or perhaps the conscious alternation--of point [i]or[/i] period of times and visions that makes his art fascinating.

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