Art Lies, Volume 47, Summer 2005 Page: 106
128 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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FORT WORTH -EVIEW
Anomalies
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Vincent Falsetta, Linda Guy, Peter Cuong Nguyen
and Kent Rush make images as if each artist is
the odd-man-out, so putting two roomfuls of
their work together is a risky venture. No matter
how idiosyncratic each artist is on their own, as
a quartet they can either play to the viewer's
tendency to group and classify-and, ultimately,
to find common threads between them-or they
may simply fall into chaos.
Vincent Falsetta's paintings feel like objects
rather than images; the artist puts line before
color. His works shimmer like fine silk moire, which
uses weave and nap to energize sheen. Filling
canvas with a candent orange as if in one, stut-
tering stroke, Falsetta's BN 03-2 waves from one
side of the plane to the other, leaving behind spots
of black in an apparent nod to Op Art. Oil paint
floods the rest of the space, electrifying the pointKent Rush, Untitled, 1999-2005
Silver-gelatin photograph on paper
4 x 4 feetPeter Cuong Nguyen, Circular Outbound, 2005 Linda Guy, Uncertain Origins Series #2, 2004
Acrylic on canvas Mixed media on canvas
48 x 55 x 21/2 inches 40 x 40 incheswhere color and line meet. Though low-contrast
(red waves on a red-orange surface), BN03-2
glows just as much as CC 04-4, which is a chro-
matograph with bits of flotsam in green, blue and
red atop a radiant yellow. In these works, Falsetta
alludes to paint's plasticity, but he is a magician. In
the end, he never reveals his secrets.
On the other hand, Linda Guy's mixed-media
works leave bare the layered process it took to
create them. Using photographs, scans of her
drawings and paintings, as well as found images,
Guy creates her base images on the computer.After printing each assemblage on inl<jet paper or
canvas, she begins her "hybrid paintings."
From the enlarged image of a computer circuit
board, Guy built a four-part series. H.D. 3 con-
tains figurative gestures in a set that otherwise
juxtaposes oblique organic references with the
mechanical. H.D. 1 superimposes circles with melt-
ing edges onto a circuit-board background. By the
time the viewer reaches H.D. 4, the circles have
not only burned completely through the board, but
have become something fleshy and monstrous.
Similarly, Guy's Uncertain Origins series settles
on circles to unite the living and the artificial. The
color families of orange and blue in UncertainOrigins No. 1 and Uncertain Origins No. 2 appear
to hemorrhage. By the time the viewer reaches
Uncertain Origins No. 3 and 4, carnage has over-
taken the relationship between foreground and
background. Lil<ewise, in Horology No. 1 and
Horology No. 2, marches relentlessly through the
disintegration process with hard, circular outlines
inspired by drawings of the planets.
Peter Cuong Nguyen's oil and acrylic paintings
seem celestial at times as well and the painting
Pulse, particularly so. By emulsifying two incom-
patible mediums-oils and acrylics-he electrifies
the photographlike contrast of a black-and-white
palette. The simple form of Pulse makes simulta-
neous reference to the energy packed inside cells
and an object floating in outer space. By linking
the celestial and cellular, black and white, thick
and thin, positive and negative, inside and outside,
Nguyen sums up dualities that have been art's
obsession over the past few decades.
Kent Rush's large-scale, grainy photographs
begin with a low-tech point of view. Working with
black and white film through the lens of an unso-
phisticated camera, he often aims toward con-
crete and asphalt for added texture. The resulting
haze is hardly romantic, although just as obfuscat-
ing as love's rose-colored glasses. The fuzzy focus
of Floresville Drain takes the viewer deep into
the stuff of nightmares, while the lone pile of dis-
carded concrete and rock in Indianola Plug intro-
duces a theme of isolation into the mix. Only the
chiaroscuro of Galaxy Quest steps out of a neo-
expressionist mode, highlighting the unexpected
sparkles emitting from a flattened speed bump.
Curator Rachel Bounds placed Rush's black-
and-white work opposite Falsetta's colorful waves,
and Nguyen's paintings opposite Guy's hybrids.
This grouping seems anomalous at first. Yet, by
gently coaxing the viewer away from color and
form and toward other, more conceptual and
overlapping ideas, Bounds offers us a chance to
sort and classify in new ways, as if these artists
stand with one foot in each other's work. Rush
perches squarely upon the inarticulate just as
Falsetta relishes the space between line and color.
Nguyen populates canvas as if the heavens and
atoms are one, much like just as Guy, who grows
living things from the artificial. The work of each
artist may seem an anomaly, yet they cannot help
but share certain qualities of otherness.106 ARTL!ES Summer 2005
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Bryant, John & Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 47, Summer 2005, periodical, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228012/m1/108/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .