Dot Jobs

Bramblett’s Mind Mine

Frank Bramblett’s seemingly simple paintings offer depth and humor.

Frank Bramblett: Paintings

Levy Gallery for the Arts in Philadelphia, Moore College of Art and Design, 20th Street and The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, through Jan. 21, 215-568-4515

For almost 30 years Frank Bramblett has been a respected and beloved professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, and he has quietly and hermetically pursued the art of painting. He makes large, ostensibly abstract and pattern-like paintings that on closer inspection turn out to be complicated and strange, sometimes even funny. His disarming and witty approach to abstraction is unusual: it reverberates with the concreteness of the materials, spacey trompe l’oeil effects, and comic relief representation that pops in the form of a piece of fruit or a smiley face. Curated by Lisa Melandri, this solo exhibition is Bramblett’s first since 1979. It follows close on the heels of another major professional success: In June, Bramblett received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for his painting.

A set of 20 painted drawings on panels, each 15- by 19-inches, covers the first wall of the exhibition. These small works document color and material experiments with a loose and immediate approach, and they are so interesting that they almost steal the show. Each unselfconsciously explores the visual qualities of a pasted-on photograph. One bright yellow panel starts with a photograph of roses. Handwritten notes by the artist document the properties of nearby blobs of red and pink paint that shift in hue and texture, going from a puckery, fire truck red to a pink and scratchy translucent film. Another panel has a photograph of lemons and foliage surrounded by luminous clumps and swirls of lemon, cadmium, red, orange, ochre and blue dots on a black background. Other panels begin with photos of a storefront, a pattern in shoveled snow, boulders, or a rusted-out motel sign. These painted drawings help instruct the viewer about the methods — and the depth — of Bramblett’s work.

eyedotcom

Eight big paintings (90- by 72-inches) cover the remaining three walls of the gallery. eyedotcom is about the wonderful world of dots, large and small. The dots are mostly black and white, but some are blue, green and maroon. Small ones, like eyeballs, accumulate in drifts between larger 3-D dots. Also, some dots seem to have faces with features made of smaller dots. It’s (visual) ridiculousness carried out on a grand scale. Tête-à-tête is biomorphic and has airbrushed breast-like ovaloid shapes and thick modeling paste swirls with nipple-like protrusions, a little cruddy in some areas like day-old birthday cake. Some ovals are painted on flat discs of modeling paste with linear sgraffito patterns. The colors are fleshy pinks, ripe, neutral and opalescent. Razzle-Dazzle looks like tacky wallpaper come to life; red roses made of thick modeling paste ooze out everywhere. Peculiar green and yellow dot clusters suggest a kind of clunky Pointillism and an intentionally artsy black, red and green background fails to recede the way it should. As a consequence the whole painting is in your face.

In contrast, Mind Mine presents the viewer with a wonderful dark silvery surface covered with luscious little cherry-colored dots. There are liquid slate-colored clouds floating through the picture plane like an Edo screen (or a computer screen for that matter) that orient the viewer in the present.

Tête-à-tête.

The textures and materials of Bramblett’s paintings are so wonderfully varied and well considered that it gives them an earthy immediacy rare in the medium of painting. In fact, the materials list for the paintings is a good clue to understanding Bramblett’s work: it reads like a chemistry class supply list, with art supplies classed together with other minerals and raw materials such as charcoal, ink, silica, watercolor, polymer emulsion, graphite, marble dust, marker, cement dust, gouache, modeling paste, etc. (Not surprisingly, I learned that Bramblett studied chemistry and pharmacology before deciding to pursue art.) Through years of working privately, Bramblett has created an almost solipsistic or naive cosmology within his paintings. In spite of this, they are extremely generous — they each, in their own way, invite the viewer into their worlds with little promises voiced purely and eloquently in material terms.