image: Once Charming – Matthew Bourbon
Where can you find two seemingly unrelated artists in one show, The University of Texas at Arlington of course? When I think of contrasting shows I often think of the Alberto Giacometti and On Kawara exhibition at the Yoshii Gallery in New York several years ago. The contrast was quite stunning. Those flat date paintings of On Kawara in contrast with the Giacometti figure sculpture still haunts me. However, I don’t see Matthew Bourbon and Rick Armendariz quite so stark a contrast. Both use figures and both have a strong narrative structure to their paintings. However, their styles of telling those stories are very different.
Bourbon is a cinephilia of quality flicks. I remember a painting class I took with him where we watch an incredible French film. We talked about good cinema as well as great paintings. His work reflects his love of films because he uses film stills as starting points in many of his images. He may start with a film, but his figures disappear into patterns of paint. In fact, patterns seem to be taken a larger role in Bourbon’s work. In his Houston show at Rudolph Blume Fine Art/Artscan Gallery, small pattern canvases butted up to the larger works. Other works had no figures at all. His figures that have been converted to geometric forms also interact with backgrounds which are populated with patterns. Sometimes it is hard to tell when the figure begins and the pattern ends. Bourbon seems to be getting more and more mysterious by the minute.
Bourbon has picked up a bit more conceptual developments in his work. Maybe a sentence structure is developing in his painting. A kind of subject and verb with the small painting actings as a verb and the larger work acting as a subject. Hard to tell with this body of work. I am just speculating on where he might be going with these paintings.
Rick Armendariz approach to painting is a more straightforward representation of a face, object, or animal. Yet, these images give me no less strange urges to understand their mysteries. He cuts into the paintings to reveal the surface underneath. Creating a painting and cutting into the surface reminds me of the Italian modernist Lucio Fontana. Though not as dramatic as Fontana, Armendariz reveals material that supports the painting. The painted surfaces are like color field paintings that feel atmospheric. While the image looks more like a drawing. Armendariz creates a surface that lets you get lost in the details while further losing yourself in the contracting airy background. Only after looking for a few moments more will a story begin to emerge. You begin to wonder what Armendariz was thinking when he made these works, but then your own story of what you would like these paintings to be about takes over. In this way, I think Bourbon and Armendariz are most similar. Standing in front of either of their works will make your mind wander in and around what might be going on.
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The Rick Armendariz and Matthew Bourbon exhibition at the University of Texas at Arlington will be going on through October 6th. I hope one of my former students going to UTA right now will see the show along with you, my readers.