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Monday, October 5, 2009

Visual Art Currently Hanging

Posted by Jen Graves on Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 11:19 AM

Tony de los Reyes's entire new show at Howard House, of paintings and this table sculpture, is based on Moby Dick.

In a talk Saturday at the gallery, de los Reyes described the sad story of Melville's rejection by the public and most of the critics for Moby Dick. He said that the NYT misspelled Melville's name in its already extremely short obit when the author died in 1891. I was curious about how it was misspelled, so I looked it up this morning. Looks like they didn't misspell Melville, they misspelled Moby Dick: Mobie Dick, they wrote (you have to open the PDF and scroll down).

The LA artist's new work is gothic and, much like the newly opened The Old, Weird America at the Frye, obsessed with the history and future of what it means to be American. In this sculpture/table, which looks prepared to walk away given those spindly legs, a skull rises from the terrible, gorgeous waves. The table is large and this picture doesn't do it much justice. Go to the gallery; the paintings need to be seen in person, too.

Here's one with an Eva Hesse reference (click to enlarge)...

(The process there is that the ship is painted in ink on unprimed linen, then the linen is primed and the oil paint—those Hesse skeins—is painted on top.)

More to come on the other show at the gallery, of paintings by Seattle's Matthew Offenbacher.

Comments (6) RSS

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Jen - here's a detail shot (tha'ts not a flash, that's just the reflective surface) of the skull. http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeyveltkam…

That piece is AMAZING!

Posted by joey veltkamp

on October 5, 2009 at 11:29 AM

The first link is broken. This does look intriguing, esp. since I just finished reading Moby Dick for the first time.

Posted by leek on October 5, 2009 at 12:29 PM

I much prefer "Mobie Dick" to "Moby-Dick"--that damned hyphen pisses me off. Best wishes.

Posted by Timmytee on October 5, 2009 at 2:38 PM

The link should be fixed -- if not now, then in five minutes.

Also, here is a site where you can search the entire book by word: http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/.

Posted by Jen Graves on October 5, 2009 at 2:40 PM

Very nice piece, but what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it? Is it table or sculpture, and is that bobbing skull the lone survivor of the Pequod or a pasteboard mask? Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Aye, aye! it was that accursed sculpture/table that took my leg--though it had four of its own--and made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day! What say ye, sailors?

Posted by Bob Rini