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Many of the works in a show of paintings, constructions and drawings by William Christenberry at Artspace at Untitled are noteworthy for their expressive messiness and raw power. Included in the exhibit by the Alabama-born, Washington, D.C. -based artist, called "William Christenberry: Beginnings,” are many works dating from 1956-68, plus three later ones done in the 1990s.
A 1959 "Self-Portrait,” done at the end of his years as an art student in Alabama from 1954-59, offers us a pencil drawing of the head of the serious looking young artist, done with a few deft strokes. More dynamic is a 1963 drawing, called "Grave II,” done as a study for a large 1963 oil canvas of the same title.
Flowers, dirt, grass, trees and crosses seem to explode onto the canvas and into the lap of the viewer in his roughly but forcefully painted "Grave II.” Equally expressionistic in their use of drips, splatters and barely controlled effusions of paint are such large oil on linen paintings as "Abstract Landscape” and "Tenant House I,” both done in 1960.
Still expressive in terms of drips and paint handling, but a bit flatter and more collagelike, are his 1963 oil of a "Fruitstand” and his 1964 mixed-media depiction of "Beale Street.” A finger sign points at three robed and masked Ku Klux Klan-like figures in the foreground of the latter composition, whose shallow space contains ads for a cafe, wrestling, jazz and a pawnshop.
Another strong element in the show is supplied by the artist’s crudely effective mixed-media constructions that seem to demonstrate his desire to give a strong, sculptural dimension to his paintings. A red and black ball hangs from a string attached to a green arrow over a green disk in front of a painting and a paint-splattered egg carton in his "Construction VIII” of 1967, for example.
Parts of boxes, a round mirror, other objects and depictions of Ku Klux Klansman share the picture plane with black, white and pink-red areas of paint in a giant 1964 acrylic collage-painting called "Initiation.” Three later, more purely sculptural, mixed-media wood and paint or encaustic works also are included in the exhibit.
His blue 1990 "Dream Building XII” is a kind of sculptural collage, while his white 1997 "Dream Building XXII” and 1999 "Memory Form V” resemble a church steeple and storage shed of the mind.
Born in 1936, Christenberry has been a faculty member at the Corcoran School of Art and Design in Washington since 1968.
— John Brandenburg |
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