Image Worlds
by John K. Grande
Nathan Bartley’s ink on fabric paintings evolved out of a wide-ranging visual arts background that has included drawing, painting, and making organic black walnut wood sculpture. With the new works, the act of building up layers, referencing images that build a visceral, 3-dimensional effect involves overlay and sequencing. It is what makes these works feel closer to Robert Rauschenberg’s multi-media way of making art. Here is an art that challenges us with its references - historical, Pop, high modernist and contemporary. These ink on fabric paintings are like assemblages situated in a neutral space. They are an expression of the intercultural, multi-source era we now live in. The choice of materials, objects, cuttings, segments, combined with dry brushwork is aleatory. Chance and random choice play a role in what is included in each work. Bartley’s process enables the viewer to participate through the act of interpretation. Above all, the accessibility to materials and media, the fluid interpretation is what draws us in! These multi-media paintings are less about the concept than building a narrative that reflects the age we now live in. The effects are like image splicing, an interweave of tactile, visual and imagistic effects.
Already in the Salt People show held in Nelson, B.C. (2007), Nathan Bartley was hybridizing the Old Testament story of Lot’s wife with Eurydice and Orpheus, ancient Greek sources. Synthesizing historical and cultural cues is simply what Bartley excels at. This synthesis is partly a result of the artist’s wanderings, his residencies in Africa, India, Taiwan, Japan, and the Yukon Territory. As technology has advanced art’s language, artists like Nathan Bartley have transferred their curiosity and instinct for exploration, weaving together connective and relational aesthetic ideas. These establish a sense of universal simultaneity. He builds a visual counterpoint using a combination of drawings, recycled sections of paintings. Images are reflected on, then altered, combined and “influenced by everything”.
With the In the Pink series, Nathan Bartley, like Francesco Goya, creates a series of parables on contemporary life that can verge on satire. A dream image Bartley once saw is brought to life. We see an a man sitting atop a pyramid of round, soft, repeated forms. Under this, there are vertical black lines. These lines could be threatening, challenging the beatific state of this person perched on high. Bartley recounts the source for this painting was a dream he had of floating on multi-coloured balloons in the Hochelaga Maisonneuve district in the east end of Montreal. In the dream what appeared to be a state of heightened awareness or even rhapsody, soon changes as the balloons break. This man is lowered, balloon-by-balloon until he is on the ground, being scolded by an old lady for not “sharing” these objects of joy. He is condemned to blow up balloons in a makeshift garage as punishment for his rhapsody.
Another work from the In the Pink series is hilarious, even as it tells a moral tale of life in our times. A man in a tracksuit with an Ipod and headphones sits on top of a pyramid of matter. There are vague images of skulls beneath him. What looks like a symbol of power, of the ego being in control, is counter-balanced by our seeing the man is preoccupied with an illusion of power. He is actually sitting on a raft that recalls Théodore Géricault’s (1791–1824) Raft of the Medusa. Nathan Bartley’s raft is out of control, depicts a potential and delirious moment of one human’s dilemma, their idea of what they think they are and where they actually are, is described simultaneously.
The choice of the title In the Pink for this recent series implies having everything. One of these mid-sized image-layered works, with its decorative brushwork and details and underpainting of the applied canvas cut out elements, presents a woman who is on top of this agglomeration of image references. She is golfing. The implication is of a member of society that is self-absorbed, achieving a prescribed goal. We see a man teeing off in the painting “Hole in One”. The goal here is a skull, and the painting initiates a strand of thought about our perception of life, our engagement with the illusions in an age of distraction.
There are ghosts of the media in Four Horsemen of Apopalypse, a painting that includes a reference to the Florentine painter, di Bondone Giotto’s remarkable and beatific landscapes where God speaks through the paint, where an angel can arrive as if from nowhere and where classic architectural elements sit on rocky hillsides. As with Giotto’s painting, Nathan Bartley plays on the tension between flat, descriptive surfaces and volumetric dimensionality with this painting. He builds a more media inscribed resonance, like Daniel Richter might achieve in this painting. Another painting titled Blind Man’s Bluff, describes the quantum principle, enacting it as if to say we create the dimensionality with what we observe. We usually attach our associations to an object, even if it is a painted object rather than the real 3-dimensional thing. Bartley’s multi-media works are sculptural, for they seek to animate the 2-dimensional plane, even to crowd it with potential symbols, images, and diverse elements. This crowding of figures and images resembles what Peter Brueghel the Elder often did in his fantastic paintings. The condensed image layering becomes a metaphor for a society where we crowd our life with images and objects. The images can be on a screen where the crowding is ethereal, or in reality where the density is exists in the form of physical objects). The paintings we witness here, are involved in building metaphors for art. The raft-like inverted pyramids are a reference to the act of painting. These paintings are about painting as a way of living for the artist and we find inset traces and references to the high modernist, diachronic conception of what a painting should do. For modernists from the Clement Greenberg school there was always an object and subject tension. Sometimes the edges would be left blank, or illusions of space would be created, and abstraction would develop in relation to the artist’s own body action, his body being a medium between viewer and reality, honing it all into a purity.
In our times, images themselves are conceived “in our minds” as objects or potential realities. Nathan Bartley tips his hat to the high modernists while equally building a visuality we read as potentially dystopian, media-saturated, and at odds with a singular truth. And so these paintings reflect an inter-cultural, geo-specific intertwining of sources, of histories. The life raft is art, and art is a stage. What seems to be anti-structural is actually structural, but the structures are a myriad of interwoven sources and images. Nathan Bartley builds his signs unconsciously, with a spontaneous and enigmatic reactivity. The content is the process he uses.
Integrating ink brushwork onto fabric, Bartley will paint and select the elements he likes. Further line work will highlight features that become significant as he draws and paints from original maquette-like drawings. This is visual editing, a selection and choosing of what stands out, or what gradually resonates in the artist’s mind. Some parts are removed, some painted over, still others are given a loose edge with dry brush. Sometimes the artist stamps with Styrofoam consecutive, repeated images or markings. The repeated action is synonymous with immediacy and process. What will emerge is never clear until the border tape coverings are removed. Other elements are cut and pasted onto an underpainted surface. Some brush and spray is added when needed. Overlay plays a role, as does underpainting. Both can change the tonality of a singular element in a painting. Selection implies that memory plays a role in the process. Finally all elements are situated in these scenarios, glued in place. Bartley will complete some aspect of a work flat on a table or floor surface, still others on the wall.
We feel a harmony in these freeform visual stories. They are less about impact than the unfolding of mystery. There are no answers and nothing is revealed. A door opens to many interpretations… To create these overpopulated image worlds, reveals both sides of the mirror, and a sense of emptiness becomes apparent, a place for the spirit.
John K. Grande
JOHN K. GRANDE, has contributed his views on art to a variety of arts publications including Artforum, Sculpture (USA), Vie des Arts, British Journal of Photography, Vice Versa and Landscape Architecture. Grande’s poetry collaborations include two with West Coast artist Arnold Shives - The Landscape Changes (Gaspereau/Prospect Press) and Homage to Jean-Paul Riopelle, Black Peat with Alfio Bonanno (The Print Factory, Ireland 2012) and Grass Grows with Thomas May at the Grass Blade Institute in Nuremburg, Germany (2013). Recent curated shows include Eco-Art at Pori Art Museum, Finland and Kathy Venter; Life at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto. www.johnkgrande.com
nathanweb@execulink.com
Nathan Bartley: The Salt People
by Courtney Andersen
My goal is not to create art, says Nathan, "Art is a means to developing as a human and to bridge gaps."
The dualities or polarities that Nathan Bartley sees in life, and that appear in his autobiographical work, contrast and blur many opposing boundaries -art practice/life practice, precious/recyclable, east/west, abstraction/realism, body/mind, subject/object, artist/viewer, unity/separation.
The cut and paste approach to Nathan's process is seen everywhere in his studio. Rather than planning and executing a particular scene, everything is in flux, often creating unexpected associations or broken narrative. Juxtapositions are more likely to raise a question than to answer one. Images are tentatively drawn and painted in black ink and charcoal with a quick hand, to be reviewed and possibly reworked later. The moments unfold without a real perception of a beginning, middle, and an end. The fresh energy of the creative process is more of a meditation, a blurring of mind and body, than a concern for a finished product. Nathan describes "time" as a construct which becomes an obsession for others.
Upon entering Nathan's studio I was bombarded with both images and non-images everywhere in the room. Some of the work was heaped up in huge piles and we sorted through some of it at random. He was excited about how he would have no idea how a picture might end up. Images and abstract marks and shapes come from nowhere and from everywhere. They could be cut up as collage items, pasted over with fresh canvas, or thrown back into the pile indefinitely. Frottage (placing paper or canvas over a textured surface and rubbing the surface with conte, charcoal, or graphite), popularized by the surrealist Max Ernst, is a technique Nathan also likes to use as a way of involving his immediate environment and creating a range of textures.
One huge chest contained countless pictures, ads, and illustrations collected over the years to be considered as images for paintings or to be directly mounted on paper or canvas.
We talked about our shared enthusiasm for the Pop artists such as Rauschenberg and Rosenquist and their process of juxtaposing disparate images with areas of pure abstraction. We agreed that Nathan's intuitive approach to recycling images is a similar process but is different from the self-consciousness of "Pop". Furthermore, Nathan is not using colour in the somewhat arbitrary manner as was the case with Pop art but is currently limiting himself to black and white which has a real rawness that doesn't seem to require the addition of colour to the surface. He feels that there is enough going on without bringing in another element, although a restrained use of colour appears in the occasional piece. He thinks about taking another look at colour sometime in the future, perhaps even consciously employing notions of colour theory. For now, black, white and all the values in between provide endless possibilities. I believe that colour would only slow down the immediacy of his movements.
When I asked Nathan about specific "meaning," he first evaded the issue by talking about what is referred to in the east as "the cult of intellect" - the pretensions around the western "Age of Reason" when everything was counted, dissected, and categorized, following traditional notions of hierarchy. He thinks of himself and his surroundings as subject to a set of circumstances that is largely outside the idea of "choice". However, within this existential universe where we are bounced around by circumstances shaped by frameworks, and social conditioning, we still have to make choices.
He denounces hierarchies. He feels that we are slaves to our conditioning and that there is a need to connect to an instinct to feel free - break out of frameworks, something Nathan calls a "state of no mind." In his works he seems to be attempting to break out of frameworks and search rather for an unfolding - a blurring of lines and divisions, or
polarities. Something Nathan calls "the dance".
Nathan talked about "the artist" and the production of an artwork - that the observer/viewer will live with the artwork much longer than the artist will for even if the artwork is destroyed, it will exist in reproductions. This places the artist as more of a cog in the unfolding of things (a set of circumstances); because ultimately the perception of the work, or "meaning" will change over time. Nathan attributes this idea to Marcel Duchamp. The artist does not have control over set meanings, expendability or value of their own work. Nathan is challenging the old concept of "artist -genius", and preciousness. He does not consider his process or his work precious, "Everything I do is practiceÖno pressure (it takes the).fear out of the process"
"The Salt People" is based on the Old Testament story "Lot's Wife", and the myth of "Orpheus and Eurydice". Both stories depict a dance between opposites; the moment of separation and the effort to heal that separation. When the Old Testament's "Vengeful God" gives Lot's family the chance to escape before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, they are told not to look back. Lot's wife can't resist the temptation and looks at the "creator", only to be turned to a pillar of salt. The moment she turns her head she is on that dividing line. Her choice is a difficult one - a split second decision - the chance to survive with her family, or to briefly unite with her maker. The temptation was overwhelming, and the price was separation from everything for an eternity. Similarly, when Orpheus has finally located his wife in the underworld, and is escorting her out of the darkness, he can't resist the temptation to look back (away from the light) to see that she is still with him. One second of doubt and need for unity costs him an eternity of separation. The work expresses the choice of taking the straight and safe route and the cost of turning away from that, of being tempted to deviate from the rational and logical choice.
The female figure in "The Salt People" represents both Eurydice and Lot's wife, and the male figure represents both Orpheus and Lot. Their poses depict that second of intense desire to look, to connect at the cost of separation. This is the "in-between moment" between past, present and future, which is consistent with Nathan's process of working which precludes a beginning, middle and end.
Besides addressing this polarity of unity/separation, Nathan sees these stories as metaphors for polarities in relationships between men and women (the dance). Thousands of years of circumstances have caused a separation of understanding between men and women, resulting in our failure as men, and the subjugation of women. He feels that it is time to close that gap and find unity once again.
Aside from the main theme and metaphor in "The Salt People", there are disparate images in the work which creates sub themes. The odd juxtaposition of Lot with a vacuum hose as a head could symbolize limitation of the senses. In both of the ancient stories someone is being required to forgo one or more of the senses. Lot's Wife is required to not look at God, and Orpheus cannot look at or listen to Eurydice. However, the meaning is left to the interpretation of the viewer. The viewer is 50% of the creative process, and of course, meaning can change over time.
This main theme can also stand in for many of the other polarities and conflicts in the world and the need for unity; that unity and "the dance" may require agreeing to disagree in trying to resolve issues but choices have to be made - and the temptation will always be there to make a destructive choice.
I think that whether Nathan wants it, or not, we'll be hearing a lot about his work in the near future.
The Salt People, essay 2, by Susan Andrews Grace
June 1-23, 2007, Oxygen Art Centre, Nelson BC
Nathan Bartley’s installation The Salt People is a poetic examination of the moment as if it lasts an eternity. Bartley renders grief and separation in black and white as it explores internal and external landscapes.
Bartley limits materials, technique, and palette in this examination of two pre-patriarchal stories: the Old Testament story of Lot’s Wife and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Lot’s wife is instructed to not look back at the burning city of Sodom but does and is turned to a pillar of ash and salt. Orpheus goes into the underworld to plead with his lyre, for Eurydice, who has died of snakebite. Orpheus is allowed to retrieve her as long as he does not look back at her. In his anxiety he looks and she vanishes forever. In both stories someone looks back, lingers, and loses the beloved. The Salt People are those who look back in memory, identify with their loves, and become frozen in one or the other divisions of the psyche, male or female. Bartley writes in his Artist Statement, “Thoughts like salt appear and dissolve; nothing is permanent despite our need for a stable conceptualization.”
The twenty-nine pieces of The Salt People are contour drawings, made with acrylic paint on raw muslin and various papers. Bartley sometimes layers torn cloth over images. He chose muslin for its lightness, the feathery quality of its torn edges and its scrim-like amplification of shadow. The methods bring to mind the ancient practice of tearing clothing in expression of anger and grief at death.
The Salt People is influenced by Chinese landscape and Japanese brushstroke. Bartley spent his early youth in Asia and studied meditation traditions. This accounts for authority in his technical expression and the Taoist flavour of analysis. There’s also a North American, twenty-first century sensibility in the overlay of imagery. “Bad Lot,” in its pun on the Old Testament character, is a suite of nine works in which the largest, approximately 10x5 feet, is a headless male figure in a boxing posture with a vacuum cleaner-like hose wrapped around his neck, as well as a mélange of marks, images and abstract shapes. The central image is flanked with four smaller pieces on either side: three men and one woman CNN broadcasters on the right, and on the left ‘muslined’ faces with Pierre Berton bow ties, suggesting a sameness of nonconformity and maleness. A Marilyn Munroe/mid-century figure peppers the installation with her hour-glass figure, girly hair and 50s dress. She appears five times in the suite The Three Judges and thirteen times in the whole installation.
The Salt People effectively expresses Bartley’s thesis of psycho-spiritual polarization of male and female, as well as north and south, east and west. The mood of The Salt People is dark and suggests that Nathan Bartley holds little hope for us or our planet and yet there is also mercy in these meditations, a prayer which may just join heaven to earth with a massive gesture of balance.