Rex Ray finds a pattern to life — and art
By INDT
Rex Ray’s 2009 Erioderma, in oil, acrylic and mixed media on linen.
We should all grab an opportunity to see work by one artist spread over two venues, especially when it offers the occasion to examine dramatic differences in scale and presentation.
That’s the situation this spring with Rex Ray, a former Colorado resident now based in San Francisco, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1988 from the San Francisco Art Institute. Ray is a consummate graphic designer, but in his fine art pieces demonstrates his talent at creating mixed media work that is all about patterning, precision, the use of color and an underlying sense of joy.
At MCA Denver, through Jan. 31, 2010, Discolaria takes over the interior wall in the museum’s light-filled Promenade Space. A series of panels knit together to form a massive (as in 25-feet wide) work that combines painting, collage, faux bois elements, cutouts, floral imagery, and swags of tiny pearl-like dots in a hypnotic array of colors. As Ray noted at the opening, his approach to placing color against color is intuitive, ignoring any caution about colors not working together. They do, each boosting the others in dynamics. In addition, Discolaria is set against wallpaper printed with colorful drop shapes in a pattern that mirrors forms in the work while amplifying the overall effect.
At T a gallery, recently extended through May 30, works by Ray in the south bay include four large oil, acrylic and mixed media on linen pieces that incorporate many of the same elements present in Discolaria. Gallery director Ron Judish has given over proper space to this quartet, allowing the exuberant chartreuse-yellow Erioderma (that floral imagery again) and the pale green Lentoria (virtual star bursts) to shine. On the opposite wall, Judish has installed a mosaic of smaller works by Ray, heavily geometric, neo-Modernist collage/paintings coated with a resin that turns them into jewel-like objects.
From the super-scale of Discolaria at MCA Denver, to the variety of works at T, it is possible to see how overlapping design elements can expand and contract to build an individual impact.
Matt O’Neill’s 2009 mixed media on linen Nude on a Bicycle.
Also on view at T a Gallery, in the center bay, is new work by Matt O’Neill, a Colorado-based artist who over the years has turned a neo-Surrealist’s eye — and a joker’s sensibility — toward painting.
That’s apparent in the selection of pieces here, which range from the early F.F.A. Sweetheart, in the style of a yearbook photo with distinctly rearranged facial features, through a series of abstracted figural work in neutral colors that recall Georges Braque (especially Nude on a Bicycle), through a trio of representational nudes that riff on the pouty persona of 1950s soft-core porn (with teaser titles to match; The Music Lover, indeed) .
O’Neill is an original, an artist who likes taking things apart and putting them together again, while making a viewer an intimate part of the story.
IF YOU GO:
T a Gallery: Rex Ray and Matt O’Neill, extended through May 30; 878-2 Santa Fe Drive; 303-893-0960, galleryt.org.
