Aura Implicit

Robin Rice on Visual Art | Emil Baumann: Paintings

by Robin Rice

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It is not obvious from his paintings that Emil Baumann is sometimes called an "outsider artist." His abstract compositions have won two prizes at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Nairobi; locally, he's shown in well-regarded spaces including PAFA and Nexus Gallery.

Painting is a primary means of expression for Baumann. He does not title or explain his paintings, but they speak vividly to the viewer. They do not represent things or tell stories in expected ways. However, with surprising ease, the networks of bands and irregular areas of color communicate a palpable, ineffable emotional aura; we feel content to simply be with these paintings.

Baumann's vocabulary of materials is sophisticated and clearly the result of experimentation and experience. Oil pastels, watercolors, acrylic and pencils are worked together in layered, lucid harmonies. He seems to use masking as a way of defining shapes and patterns. Baumann consistently treats lines, including ribbon-like dashes, as forms that are often themselves decorated with additional elaborated lines. The feeling is active and vaguely urban. We might think of girders or bridges or faces or signage, but none of that is explicit.

University City Arts League's materials on this work relate it to dreams and to the lost continent of Atlantis. As culture critic Celeste Olalquiaga has pointed out, the Atlantis disaster myth has perversely evolved from that of undersea death trap into a nostalgic vision of luxury.

From Wassily Kandinsky to Philadelphia's Moe Brooker, abstract painters have often linked their compositions to music, and the viewer senses that relationship. There's structure and order in Baumann's paintings, but it feels more like the rhythm of living sounds than like composed, even improvised, music. I think John Cage might have understood it.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Emil Baumann: Paintings | Through April 16, University City Arts League, 4226 Spruce St., 215-382-7811, ucartsleague.org