Reviews

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excerpt's from:

Area artists enchant, entertain, surprise in outstanding exhibit at Atrium

Jim Glenn Thatcher / Special to the Sun Journal

Encore | Saturday, February 28, 2015

Biennial juried exhibit displays artwork of 93

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LEWISTON -- Once again, USM-LAC’s Atrium Art Gallery curator Robyn Holman has assembled the work of many decidedly more-than-accomplished area artists into another beautiful and brilliant exhibition.

Over the past few years I’ve probably reviewed most of the art shows put on here, many of them also featuring the work of Maine artists, and all have been considerably more than a bit beyond “wonderful.” Many of the works shown have in fact been worthy of this country’s more famous big-city galleries and museums—MOMA, say, or the Smithsonian. But the day I walked in here to start taking notes for a review of this show, I immediately felt something even deeper than my usual reactions to Atrium’s exhibits, as though the colors surrounding me were somehow even deeper and brighter, the images more wondrous than I’d felt here in the past. I was aware of the almost unbelievable intensity here—the work of 93 accomplished artists from a mere three counties in central Maine—not a possibility that would probably ever even occur to any of the curators of those big-city galleries.

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Thomas Neubert’s “On the Origin of Species”—collage, acrylic, found objects. Even its frame is a collage forming part of the question—clam and nautilus shells growing out from it along with other objects, including what seems to be a jaw of blackened teeth and a sprung mousetrap clasping a twisted, metal spring. Inside the frame more collage—fingers coming in from its edge holding a cover of “The Origin of Species,” and crawling down the other imagery a pair of very realistic lizards stand out from the surface, one large the other small, on their way down toward that already-mentioned mousetrap.

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On a nearby wall, Neubert has another—much larger—work, “Darwin on Fire”. Seen from a distance it looks like a portrait of a nineteenth-century man, all done in dull blues, greys, black and white. White hair and beard, black hat with a rounded crown and narrow brim. As you come closer the imagery begins to break apart—the closer you come the portrait breaks up to dissolve into little squares, and when you stand directly in front of it you see that the little squares are pixels—the kind of little squares you’ve seen on your TV screen when its image begins to break apart. When you’ve come this close you can see that this is how Neubert has formed Darwin’s portrait—dozens of pixels, each its own shade from the dull colors listed above—a Darwin formed in almost futuristic fragments. And standing there now, you can see that the artist has handwritten 20 quotes from Darwin’s writings—some scientifically philosophical, others personal, all broken into poetic lines. The artist here is trying to tell you something. He wants you to think about it, and you can’t help but to be drawn in.

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