Bradd Skubinna, Robert McNown and Jeffrey Burgert at Francine Seders

Through June 4^th

Too often these days, our experience of a work of art begins with an idea passed along to us by a gallery owner, museum curator, or the artist herself. Even if we encounter the painting, sculpture or installation before the intervention takes place, we still must square what we’ve seen with someone’s explanation or contextualization. Do we like it more now or less? Is our first reaction as valid as it was before?

Having lately grown weary of such circumspection and second-guessing, I was pleased to find myself at Francine Seders Gallery last week taking in the sculpture of Bradd Skubinna, the drawings of Robert McNown, and upstairs, the paintings of Jeffrey Burgert. All three artists share a faith in the viewer’s ability to respond to their work on its own sensory terms, unaided by philosophical musings, history lessons, or personal anecdotes.

Skubbina’s sprawling abstract wall-mounted sculpture, Everything Happened at Once, seems to almost float by as one enters the galley and walks past it. Constructed from thinly cut and curled cylinders of printed cardstock (many appear to be recycled exhibition postcard announcements from shows past), white and brightly-colored plastic bottle cap rings with their familiar serrated edges, and drinking straws all cut to specific lengths, the work has an amazing degree of energy that comes from the subtle variances of its light, color, and texture. With only slight changes in grade, the cumulative effect of the cut paper edges -- with their recessed color interiors -- give the center of the work a rough, almost sandy appearance. By contrast, the outlying sections -- built of clear plastic straws massed together with occasional star shapes or concentric rings of pink, orange, or blue straws in their centers -- appear smooth, fluid, and opaque.

Negative Space Drawing, his other large work on display at the gallery, is situated on the adjacent wall. It is a loose, irregular web of plastic bottle cap rings fastened together with paper-covered wire twist-ties. The bright colors of the materials and their delicate, stringy contours contrast with the flat, latticed shadow cast behind it. Nearby is Shift, a piece comprised of plastic bread-loaf clasps, prescription pill bottle caps, drinking straws, and tea bag tags which emanate across the floor in concentric circles from central points beside the wall. The dynamism of the work comes in part from the engineered purposes of these component parts, which were designed, of course, for snapping on, popping off, tugging upward or sucking out. Also included in the show are a series of smaller, moody abstract works entitled Blue Drawings, constructed of translucent blue plastic applied in strips onto paper. Skubinna transcends the mundane nature of his materials by identifying their potential energies and harnessing them into large, carefully constructed works of art.

If these sculptures force us to step back and get a better view of what’s going on, McNown’s ink on paper works, with their detailed lines, cross-hatchings, loops, dots, and concentric rings – all cut and reassembled into larger patterns -- draw us forward. The titles of these works, January 2005, July 2004, July II 2004, 14 April 2005, suggest the qualities or temperament of specific months and days; properties that extend beyond our memories of people, narratives, or events. McNown's compositions are, like Skubinna’s, equal parts geometry and color. In both cases, the vibrancy of their color spectrum is processed and articulated through shape and line, modulating the texture and mood of experience.

In the dimly-lit upstairs gallery are a series of small, yellow monochromatic oils by Jeffrey Burgert. As we approach and gaze at them head on, they seem to darken; as we pass them by, they fade back again to their original, lighter shade. At the angle of their greatest darkness, a mysterious grid of light appears, hovering ever so slightly above the canvas.

There is too much art today that is based upon intellectual premises rather than real sensory interaction. Maya Lin’s “Systematic Landscapes” exhibit at the Henry may be the apotheosis of this, but the trend is evident everywhere. Seeing the work of these three artists reaffirmed the primacy of an art that contains all its joys and mysteries in its own creation.

I've just returned from touring museums in Holland, Belgium, and Paris with a group from the Gage Academy of Fine Art. One of the highlights of the trip was the blockbuster "Rembrandt/Caravaggio" show now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, another example of the current fashion for blockbuster two-artist shows.

But there is one crucial difference between the current Rembrandt/Caravaggio show in Amsterdam and other recent two-artist exhibitions such as Pissarro/Cezanne (Paris), Van Gogh/Gauguin (Chicago), or Matisse/Picasso (New York). Pissarro and Cezanne actually lived and painted side-by-side, as did Van Gogh and Gauguin, while Matisse and Picasso were rivals and friends for much of their careers. All of them had a well-documented, ongoing dialogue with each other, and our understanding of their work is strengthened by seeing their pictures displayed together.

No such connection can be made between Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Rembrandt van Rijn. Not only was Rembrandt only four years old when Caravaggio died in 1610, he never saw any of the Italian artist’s actual paintings. Though Caravaggio started an artistic revolution that made waves throughout Europe, Rembrandt learned about this revolution second-hand from Caravaggio's Dutch and Flemish followers, artists whose works Rembrandt was personally able to see and appreciate. Like his near-contemporaries Rubens, Velazquez and La Tour, Rembrandt adopted the stylistic traits of the Caravaggisti, using life-size figures, stage lighting, and a cast of street characters, to create gripping, close-up dramas. But since an actual relationship between Rembrandt and Caravaggio was non-existent, an entire show devoted to the subject proves to be a bit of stretch.

Still, the curators have done their best to make up for the weakness of their basic premise by providing an outstanding collection of the two artist’s strongest work, hung in pairs which (mostly) share similar themes or compositions. A lot of institutional muscle must have been expended to achieve all-star match-ups such as the inclusion of both artist’s versions of the Sacrifice of Abraham, or their naked boy pictures Love Triumphant (Caravaggio) and The Rape of Ganymede (Rembrandt). None of these paintings has ever been showed together, and it’s highly edifying to compare the flamboyant, homoerotic Cupid in Caravaggio’s painting with the purposely ugly, urinating, anti-classical toddler being lifted heavenward by an eagle in the adjacent Rembrandt – Italian eroticism and idealization, versus Dutch earthy humor, deflating the pretenses of mythology.

For me, the aha moment came when I encountered the two great dinner table paintings, Supper at Emmaus (Caravaggio) and Belshazzar’s Feast (Rembrandt). I’d seen both paintings before – they are both in the National Gallery in London – but never side-by-side. Caravaggio’s Supper contains some of his most superlative descriptive passages, especially in the painting of the still-life elements such as the food, pottery, and tablecloth, and the torn, projecting shirt on the elbow of the nearest figure. Rembrandt’s tabletop is also brimming with gleaming objects, brilliantly described, and his figures wear clothing heavy with detail. But whereas Caravaggio’s painted surface is enamel smooth and brushstroke-free, Rembrandt has built up parts of his canvas in thick, crusty layers, the jewels and cape of the Babylonian carved out of heavy ridges and slabs of paint like a bas-relief. Though artists previous to him had used impasto in scattered passages, in works like Belshazzar Rembrandt explored a completely new way to use paint, seeing it not as merely a tool for creating an illusion of form and light as in Caravaggio, but as a three-dimensional material whose tactile properties a painter might feel free to exploit and explore.

The ultimate expression of Rembrandt’s experiments with paint as material is in the famous Jewish Bride, here paired meaninglessly with The Conversion of Magdalene, a painting with which it shares only the same number of figures – two – but little else. In this late Rembrandt, the sleeve of the bridegrooms cloak is built up in a massive array of painted mounds, clots, plateaus and swirls that has thus far baffled experts trying to deduce its process, let alone its purpose. While most of Rembrandt’s paint experiments seemed to produce an increased illusion of the object depicted, here the paint seems to almost be on the verge of having a life of its own, independent of the substance it is meant to depict, celebrating its own materiality.

In the short term, art history belonged to Caravaggio, not Rembrandt. Artists who followed the two giants of the first half of the 17th Century almost all ignored Rembrandt’s rough, dimensional use of paint in favor of Caravaggio’s gleaming illusionism. “Surface”, the actual texture of paint on canvas, was not an important issue in painting until the advent of modern art in the late 19th Century, some three hundred years later. When it did return to artistic consciousness, it did so with a vengeance, as can be seen in thickly-painted, highly textural works by artists like Van Gogh and Monet, artists who were merely the first in a long line of contemporary artists continuing what Rembrandt began.

Modern artists who use thick paint in a relief-like manner generally fall into two categories: those who carve the painted surface to further mimic the subject they are depicting (like the early Rembrandt), and those for whom the actual dimensionality of paint is of interest independent of what is being portrayed (like the late Rembrandt). Here in Seattle, there is no shortage of artists representing both camps - the careful crafting of a complicated paint surface is a feature of much recent work.

One prominent local artist who uses dimensional paint as an illusionistic tool is Robert Helm. Widely known for his modest-sized, surrealistic panels in which birds, rocks, and wood grain figure prominently, Helm relies on trompe l’oeil to further a sense of mystery and contradiction. It’s impossible to tell exactly how he creates his painted surfaces, pitted like the moon in places, polished to a marble sheen elsewhere, and that’s partly the point. Helm, like the early Rembrandt is part painter, part sculptor, with the line of division purposely vague.

No such mystery adheres to the work of Ben Darby, whose work was featured at the now-closed Bryan Ohno Gallery. Darby’s work featured a comic universe of unlikely elements like rubber chickens, silverware, and phalluses. Throwing all subtlety to the winds, many of Darby’s painted elements were actually molded in the paint, raised in relief like so many plastic parts in a ready-to-assemble model making kit, interacting with painted landscape elements which are more conventionally depicted.

As for artists using coagulated, dimensional paint as an expressive element in its own right, two recent shows provide some excellent examples. Mark Takamichi Miller in his recent exhibit at Howard House displayed tiny, cut-out human figures based on found photographs, mounted directly onto the wall. The clotted, wrinkled, tortured-looking paint surface of these miniature figures appeared crushed and distorted, like a rag doll run over by a truck.

Less contorted, but with the oil paint in even higher relief, were the abstractions on view at Francine Seders last month of Olivia Britt. Britt has evolved a technique for creating slabs of pure oil paint inches thick, carved into uneven surfaces like a relief map of the Grand Canyon – here creased like a deep trench, there scooped out like a crater. Other paintings feature pockmarked plains and folded mounds, with each surface set apart by deep color as well as texture.

Art-making methods have become far more various since the long-ago time of Rembrandt and Caravaggio. The fine arts now include such new media as video, photography, and collage. But as Rembrandt himself demonstrated and subsequent generations of artists have reaffirmed, the properties of paint alone – used with freedom and imagination – has a nearly infinite potential to engage the creative mind and hand.

Now that Robin Held has firmly settled into the role of Senior Curator at the Frye Art Museum, the institution's new profile has come more fully into view. Once the outpost of venerable but peculiar European and American painting traditions, the museum has now become the most original and exciting art venue in town, thanks to Held's provocative shows and intelligent re-introduction of its holdings.

Held's latest effort, Swallow Harder: Selections from the Ben and Aileen Krohn Collection, establishes the museum as a contemporary art venue while still positioning it within its historical purview. As one might expect, the figure remains central to the balance of this equation. Like the Fryes, the Krohns have an eclectic eye and a taste for the sensual. As one walks through this exhibition the Fryes' permanent collection -- hung salon-style in the main gallery -- seems almost to peer through the doorways, carefully examining the flamboyant new house guests.

Over a relatively short period of time, the Krohns have amassed one of the region's most important collections of local, national, and international contemporary art; a body of work that includes painting, drawing, sculpture, and video. Rather than impose any large construct upon her selections, Held has chosen instead to create a show that represents the spirit and enthusiasm of the Krohns and their collecting impulse.

Returning often to the themes of sex and identity as lived through the prism of pop culture, the exhibition reveals the couple's taste for the brash, intelligent, and fun. But there is also a deeper subtext here, a freewheeling exploration of what contemporary art is and how it works.

Entering the first gallery after first passing Scott Fife's colossal gray cardboard bust of Mies van der Rohn toppled on its side in the rotunda, our senses are disrupted by assume vivid astro focus' psychedelic digital video Free Bird. The bright colors, swirling shapes and raucous sounds collide with our museum-going expectations (at least those we associate with visits to the Frye) and prepare us for something different. We see the recurring image of a young woman in hippy garb transform into an elderly grandmother and revert back again. Our gut response is affirmed as we glance over at Mark Mumford's vinyl inscription -- after which the show is named -- and are entreated (twice) to do as he says. Next to this piece we see Stuart Hawkin's monumental photograph Untitled (Toilet Paper) alongside Aaron Plant's larger Substance, in which a slender figure of uncertain age and gender extends an index finger coated with some thick, indeterminate goo. In the center of the gallery, possessing the same liquidly forms as Free Bird, is Jeffry Mitchell's glazed earthenware Untitled Pickle Jar with its ornamental protrusions and curious roaming animals.

The bodily sensations created by these works are ones of both pleasure and physical discomfort. The intelligent installation of the first gallery reminds us of the impact art should have upon us, where we can witness and experience a kind of metempsychosis brought about by the combined effect of thoughtful juxtapositions. This phenomenon occurs here and continues as we move on through the exhibit.

Chris Doyle's dream-like still Peacock Blue Sea, Asana Tabanoubu, Away With Words, with its reclining aqua-blue nightclub denizen, leads us into the next room. It is followed closely by Alice Wheeler's cross-dressing fan portraits Genderfuck Courtney and Genderfuck Kurt, whose subject appear as if living Cindy Sherman works. Here in the second gallery the body gives way to the natural and man-made landscape before slowly reverting back again. The disruption of perspective brought about by Victoria Haven's faint ink on vellum Drawing and delicately incised shelf-paper Twin Peaks is a prelude to the looming danger contained within Nicola Lopez's collage and print Twister. Leo Saul Berk's Hogbacks Back to Back, a multi-layered (and multi-colored) landscape relief, reveals the fluid nature of the earth and, in the context of the show, ourselves. Similarly, Patrick Holderfield's Untitled #89, with its architectural fragments floating in the dark washes, suggests the breakdown of our senses, even the possibility of our own physical disintegration

In the Seattle art scene, such bodily degenerations have long been Claire Cowie's stock-in-trade. Her liquid, milky-toned cast resin figures, represented here by a series of works entitled Big Bunny, Red Headed Woman, Bird on Green, Blue-Tailed Duck, and Yellow Girl, appear to be melting away from their recognizable forms. As they slip away (or emerge, as it may be) they evoke a familiar sense of vulnerability. Her watercolor Soldiers, with its subtle layering and broad, loosely rendered human figures, has a similar effect upon us. Marc Green's spooky Lair of the Hessian -- complete with floating, irregular, ghost-like images of knights, sorcerers, and glistening swords all clustered around the trunk of a thick, black tree -- functions as the centerpiece of the exhibition. It not only embodies the aforementioned process of metempsychosis with its bizarre formal composition and Arthurian-looking subjects, it somehow manages to bring together all the disparate elements of persona and structural implosion that recur throughout the show.

Nearby we see Green's ink on paper Rave, a landscape of heaped-together nudes, and Amy Dickie's cutout pen on paper You Are So Lucky. The latter is a taut sculpture of negative space carved from a magazine image of a slender but large-breasted woman holding her arms above her head. Through the mediums and techniques we have already witnessed in this gallery, we find ourselves confronted once again with human flesh.

Antonio Goicolea's Stigmata, with its lush greenery, warm summer light, and artist's face transposed on the bodies of teenage boys who play with tampons in a suburban backyard, has a eerie supernaturalism somewhat akin to that of Green's Hessians. Next to it is Marcelino Gonsalves' oil and graphite Boys, in which a group of pastel-colored teens stand waist-high conversing in a pool. it is part Hockney, part Eakins. Jeffrey Chadsey's Boxer (Jude), an ink on vellum portrait of a languid, half-smiling man lying upon a bed, captures the casual, latent humor that pervades the entire exhibition.

The notion of persona asserts itself in this gallery with MK Guth's Good Samaritan superhero fantasy, acted out in the video I Want To Hold Your Hand and the Wonder Power Action Hero photographs. Here good deeds go punished, or at the very least ignored. Peter Rostovsky's Nikki Sixx, an oil portrait of the Motley Crue bassist, has a High Renaissance formality that befits his stardom and outlandish appearance but acknowledges the irony of such a representation. Vincent Valdez's What's Your Name Son?, a nighttime depiction of an urban youth holding a menacing pit bull on a leash, is, by contrast, a portrait of someone defiant and unknown, lost amidst the blaze of city lights.

Three of Steven Miller's large sepia-toned, milk splattered portraits are here, offering catharsis and physical release from the intensity of many of the works and the coyness of others. Among the latter are Dean Sameshima's series of six flat but provocatively-titled images that hang high above our heads

As the exhibition draws to a close, the works re-engage us in a dialogue about the limits of our senses. Saturo Aoyama's two portraits, both entitled Ran, show the same woman as seen from two different vantage points. The first is an embroidered frontal image of her face, rendered in life-like colored thread while the second is a more distant, full-length charcoal drawing of her from behind. From the opposite perspective, Reuben Lorch-Miller's blurred, juxtaposed photographs of a guitar player and mountain, both entitled From The Oblivion, reveal the confusing similarities of seemingly unrelated objects He alerts us to these ambiguities again with his hoodie that reads "Nowhere" until it is unzipped and reads "Now here." The shows themes culminate in the auditorium hallway with Jason Savalon's 39 Blowjobs. As the title suggests, thirty-nine images of couples engaged in this act have been layered together to create a highly textured yet irresolvable approximation of this intimacy. As we have seen throughout the exhibition, the hardcore can be rendered soft as we gaze upon what could be (and perhaps is) a dream-like landscape or subtle abstraction.

Finally, assume video astro focus' video Cigs and Pils is shown on the wall of the cafe. It functions as a coda to the exhibit; a dizzyingly seductive (and charmingly retro) demonstration of the way such images are used to market consumer goods to us with promises of happiness and fulfillment.

Swallow Harder, with its important works and careful arrangement, asks us to examine the physical transformations that inform our experience and help us to understand the world around us. Sexual arousal, the experience of adolescence, the confusion of gender, and our need to assume special identities to protect ourselves from the unknown are all potent metaphors for what we do when we create or look at art. And art, as we all know, exists so that we might make sense of our lives.