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Bliss
unveils her ‘ugly beauty’ at Snyderman Charmed, charged and charted, by a most abiding soul, “Ugly Beauty,” featuring work by Rachel Bliss, is the perfect exhibition to start the new art season. It’s at Snyderman Gallery, 30 Cherry St., Old City, through Sept. 27 with an opening on First Friday. The title is taken from a tune by bop pianist Thelonius Monk, and other watchwords here are a deep presence. Informed by a private vision that paces impressive technique with abundant energy, this is a sprawling, free-wheeling collection of work that boasts funny animals and serious people and pristine portraiture which is melded to scenarios at once personal and mythic. The flow ranges from the highly improvisational to stark formalism. From pieces composed on small floor tiles to larger, more mystic efforts impacted with history and the holistic, Rachel bliss is as much tour guide and naturalist as artist, as surety of her purpose ever coalesces into a panoramic, cerebral construct swarming with emotion. The interface where legend sprouts from roots grounded in truth and then offered up as evidence of courage and its aftermath courses through “Mine.” The rhythm and harmony of the composition is jarred by the juxtaposition of its very elements. Those outsized and comic in faux-grotesque fashion are offset by the youthful visage that is rendered in a classical manner, and the results enjoin each component to its on nonchalant symmetry and synergy. The pale palette further removes this piece to another plane of existence, while life is furthered by the innocence of the child, no longer a warrior, no longer considering his handiwork as he faces us, and yet...The sword upraised in triumph yields a furtherance of a dream state, ever on the brink of waking. The three wounds have deflated the figure’s own connection with our world, yet the expression, blanched yet knowing, anchors all beyond a dead beast whose own crimes remain unknown for now. Childhood remembered, childhood deferred, a sensory trigger that both opens the floodgates of memory while shunting them aside is prevalent in “Corduroy.” Here, the material of the teddy bear covers the weight behind the thing, while at once keeping close the path back to those days when the bear was a best friend. The curious crudeness of this piece is but a sham, as what is extolled in truth is subtlety, a semblance of the slipshod a mere mask atop the characterizations that afford connections their ever-universal basis. If here is a question that the bear might be something other than a child’s toy, then the title eliminates all doubt. However, the piece holds myriad connotations, starting with the olfactory and tactile. Our erstwhile rough-hewn ursine compatriot is nothing that went up San Juan Hill, though he sure looks the worse for wear. Instead, we find our hero gazing back to mirror texture with good old common sense. There is a driven quality to the small, untitled pieces composed on floor tile - an immediacy that nonetheless evokes craft, care and purpose of aesthetic. The one we have here is downright totemic and possessed of strangeness that keeps it at arm’s length from the others This is a technically astute painting that contains elements of drawing . On the flip side, it is also a very painterly drawing. It is also a mug shot of the damned, a model for a mask, something amphibian. Yet at the core is the old tale about the frog prince: often the kindest among us are spent in unseemly packages. This is indeed an example of ugly beauty, though the latter quality tends to overshadow the form with every passing second spent gazing on it. There is an ease here that has nothing to do with “easy,” as the unplumbed complex depths of the piece are never to be fully revealed. The questions that “Malcolm” poses are: 1. Can he take wing? 2. Does he wish to take wing? The subliminal urge that is ingrained in us all on a genetic level to make like Daedalus is overshadowed her by the methodology employed in offering balance as something that doesn’t necessarily negate gravity. Malcolm might be found in some field guide that Audobun rejected, a spirit of flight always on the periphery of sight. Is Malcolm the last of his species, a dodo for our days? Perhaps the ears are what have supplanted the wings so that his liftoff is like Dumbo’s, the wings reduced to crutches now after too many failures in the cloning lab. Anomalous in the efforts of how the artist accentuates certain elements while keeping other in an inchoate state, the sharp details strengthen to complete that which is still in the process of being born. “Ugly Beauty” is a step forward for one of Philadelphia’s true treasures. Though her oeuvre touches on a variety of like-minded artists, Rachel Bliss’ unique talent shakes loose from the pack as it gains gleaming momentum.
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