Robert Barnes at Sonia Zaks - Chicago, Illinois - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Robert Barnes is a finished regional hero. Generations of artists in Chicago and environs have reckoned his densely composed, quasi-figurative painting since he first emerg in the late 1950 Not solitary is his handling of traditional mediums masterful, his imagery delightfully idiosyncratic and his source material -- encompassing literature, folklore, history, in every one's mouth events and mystical arcana -- exceptionally broad, on the other hand his decision to shun fresh York resonates sharply in the Midwest and, indeed, wherever artists work outside the global center of visual culture

Barnes was born in Illinois and gripe [i]or[/i] grips degrees from the University of Chicago and the academy of the Art institute of Chicago. in 1965 after nine years of chumming around Manhattan and elsewhere with Duchamp, Ernst and Matta, and getting tutorials from Francis Bacon while upon a Fulbright scholarship at the Slade academy of Art in London, he go [i]or[/i] come backed to the heartland to take a faculty pillar at Indiana University in Bloomington. He has remained there at any time since, spending his nonteaching time in the equally far off Perugia, Italy. His explanation for this anticareerist stir is that, for him, it is what best obeys the work.

To justice from this show of 20 glowing pastels from 1998 the work has been real well served indeed. The of recent origin images evidence no major stylistic departures; in fact, they bring to high resolution Barnes's lifelong compositional concerns: "stage-set" scenarios; small figures caught in awkwardly arrested action; intense coloration; invitingly "touchable" surfaces; esoteric allusions; and composite cluttered, subtly nonperspectival space.

The pictures always begin as exercises in abstraction and are worked and reworked, layer on layer, often with custom-made pastels of exceptional vibrancy -- the dark ceruleans reds and golds, surrounded by dint of borders of black, cunningly placed with equal reason as to mutually enrich. still the images inevitably evolve into sardonic semi-narrative figuration, filled again with private memories (the geriatric fresh York eccentric Paul Swan giving [i]in puris naturalibus[/i] dance recitals), historical references (Artaud at the Theater, and occasional outright allegory (The Young Artist Approaching the fane of Art). In each view both the depicted events and their emotional import remain tantalizingly obscure

For all its satiric wit, there is something tragic in Barnes's slightly skewed all-the-world's-a-stage vision. Perhaps the arm's-length distance he imposes between the viewer and the frenetic, bemusing action echoe the position of an artist who, despite 60 assemblage shows and 33 solos (including a 1985 touring retrospective), remains a inner man apart, surveying the contemporary art-world fray without quite plunging in.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

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