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new season is already well seasoned September is the start of the art season and at the forefront is “Ugly Beauty,” featuring work by Rachel Bliss at Snyderman Gallery (www.sydermanworks.com), 303 Cherry Street through September 27. Ms. Bliss is one of the most intense and mysterious artists working in the city, and you never know what to expect since the artist herself doesn’t just a week or so before it’s time to fill the gallery. As the exhibit’s title is taken from a Thelonious Monk tune, this work sings and swings, and is filled with visual syncopation aplenty. What’s here includes painterly drawings, paintings that combine soulful cool and technical chops to spare along with everything else that spans that continuum. A little L.A. School that touches on 1930s animation cells, a smattering of expertly rendered portraiture embedded in confluence with odd animals, plus the out and out heraldic yet resonant of the artist’s private universe, this work is culled from the subconscious and then presented to the world as a surefire offering of an abiding spirit. Said spirit often offers up an almost cut and paste aura as within individual pieces run expert testimonies to her gifts alongside lines and marks that have been delineated with an emphasis on imagination rather than any need to place them within our own world. For example, depth of dimension vies with a purposeful flatness to afford the work a connection with dream logic. “Ugly Beauty” holds plenty of secrets, and plenty of details that when added up slip into the subliminal section of your cranium.
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