Large format, deep impact

Author: Mario Ariza

The Large-Format Drawing exhibition, located in the Johnson Memorial Building's gallery, showcases 11 works from last semester's Studio Art I course. The featured pieces are generally charcoal- and pastel-based portraits executed on several large, stapled rectangles of coarse paper. The 11 works of art, selected from over 80 entries, are not necessarily the work of studio art majors and reveal, at times, unorthodox approaches to a medium that is neither new nor edgy.

The simplest, and one of the most direct pieces of the exhibition, is by Katelyn Romanov '11. A study in contrasts, the work's only light source is weak and in the top left hand corner. It shines lightly on the back of the up-in-the-air legs of a nude, upside down female figure lying on a bed. The torso of the figure is in a deep shadow that gradually fades to pitch black, obscuring any view of anything above the figure's off-kilter breasts. Done completely in charcoal, the piece is simple and elegant in the way it relies only on the upside down figure for balance and only on the contrast between light and shadow for movement.

Immediately next to it is ­­­­­­­­­a work by Lingji Hon '11. A riot of color and chaos of forms, this smaller charcoal and pastel work is as notable for its visual imbalance as for its rich reds, greens, yellows and blacks. Female torsos with yellow shadowed breasts emerge from a strange foliage. In the center left stands a chiseled male figure. Next to him two torsos are entwined and below that, a pair of lips are pursed in ecstasy. Motion in this piece is abstracted, and the intense sexual experience so artfully suggested and so colorfully rendered is held in stasis by the pieces' inherent imbalance. The large areas of deep red in the upper-right quadrants only enhance the sensations of pause and abeyance.

Standing at the center of the exhibition is a piece by Moriel Rothman '11, an interestingly framed portrait of a muscled male, with a hat on his loins and pink hearts in his sunglasses. The piece is cheeky, and the color lacking in the black and grey male figure is provided by colorful phrases like "my goal is to live in full" and "lightning in my veins" scrawled willy-nilly across the white spaces. This is the only composition in the selection that relies on words as visual components, and they are integral to the composition's attempt at conveying the strange mix of ego and vulnerability involved in what appears to be a nude self-portrait.

The strongest, and most stunning piece exhibited is by Lisa Shea '10. Done in pastel, charcoal and ink, this composition uses the white space of the paper and the suggestive power of rough, bold lines extending into nothing to forcefully conjure a female nude. The face of the nude receives the most detail, with black ink being used to coherently order the piercing gaze of the posing figure. The shock of orange hair is incoherent, flaming out from the head and falling on the hard, inked lines of the shoulders. The torso and buttocks are an expert suggestion, shaded here and there in orange, and the abdomen - mostly white space - is crowned by the belly button. The limbs dissolve into outline and finally, down to a line, (the entire left leg suggested by only that one line running down from the buttocks to the edge of the paper).

The pieces on exhibit all manage to spark something in the observer, and are well worth the search through Johnson's warren-like interior that is necessary to find them.