Feb. 04, 2009 - Issue #694: The Way We Were

Sub-Sur-Face: Curiously Modern

Geng successfully exploits Modernist tendencies with Sub-Sur-Face

In the last couple of years, the Art Gallery of Alberta has shown a distinct interest in examining its own historical role in the development of artistic practices in Edmonton, explored most recently in the current Sylvain Voyer show. The University of Alberta is often mentioned as the second large institution responsible for the promotion of abstract aesthetics and Greenberg-derived theory, but its galleries do not have the scope to display the same kind of historical exploration. 

 

Instead, shows like Yan Geng’s Sub-Sur-Face, up now at the FAB Gallery, explore Edmonton’s institutional modernist legacy in the present. Geng, who has only been in Edmonton for a short time working towards this, his final MFA presentation, speaks in his brief and to-the-point statement of a desire to incorporate both abstract and figurative elements into his work—a desire which is plainly visible in the paintings themselves. Although the transition from the aesthetic power structure Voyer rebelled against and contributed to is sometimes painful, especially for an institution like the U of A, its legacy seems to be providing fertile ground for those, like Geng, who are willing to explore it.

 

Geng’s numerous works are based in a re-imagining of the principles of modernist abstraction. He starts with the distrust of representation implicit in abstract painting—a feeling that representative images are bound to be inauthentic because they lie about their true, flat, nature, and therefore cannot portray the same intellectual or emotional intensity of abstract work—and, in a postmodern move, breaks it free of its origins in painting and applies it to the world outside of painting. Geng is not just suspicious of images of people, but of people themselves, suggesting that their faces and the emotions that they claim to display are inauthentic performances. 

 

This is the central idea from where Geng binds the figurative and abstract portions of his work together, but the real strength of the work is in its subtlety. Climbing the stairs into the upper level of FAB Gallery and looking at the first few works, it takes a moment to be sure that in fact there are images of people in the paintings, and the best works function well in both aesthetic traditions. Crucial to the delicate balance of the paintings is the paint surface, where the flatness and modernist heritage of the works are emphasized, and a few of the works go too far here, as the rough globs of paint privilege the surface too much over the depths of the illusory image underneath, making these works seem much less interesting by disrupting the aesthetic dialogue. 

Generally, however, Geng is successful in preserving the complexity in his works, and in the best paintings the textural surface elements seem carefully considered and complement to the images underneath. Geng allows his paintings to exist plainly, without forcing unnecessary excitement on them, and although they are quiet, they are beautiful. V 
 

Until Sat, Feb 14
Sub-Sur-Face
MFA painting show by Yan Geng
FAB Gallery (87 ave & 112 st)

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