Mallory Page

Astral I

mixed media on wood

36″ x 48″

Mallory Page

Astral II

mixed media on wood

36″ x 48″

Mallory Page

Astral III

mixed media on wood

48″ x 72″

Mallory Page

Calm Conscious

mixed media on wood

48″ x 60″

Mallory Page

Cirrusly II

mixed media on canvas, framed

24″ x 30″

Mallory Page

Cirrusly III

mixed media on canvas, framed

23″ x 30″

Mallory Page

Cirrusly IV

mixed media on canvas, framed

24″ x 30″

Mallory Page

Clarity of Spirit

mixed media on wood

48″ x 60″

Mallory Page

Half and Half

mixed media on wood

36″ x 48″

Mallory Page

Head in the Clouds

mixed media on canvas, framed

30″ x 40″

Mallory Page

Moon Movement

mixed media on canvas, framed

30″ x 40″

by Reggie Michael Rodrigue

Pure, abstract expressionism is a rare and elusive breed in South Louisiana’s contemporary art scene. In fact, I could count the number of contemporary abstract expressionists I know practicing in the state on two hands.

Personally, I believe that something about the style inherently flies against the face of the overarching Catholic tastes of the populace: South Louisianians crave iconography.   We generally like to recognize or at least be able to relate to what we see.  This response aligns itself with our culture, which operates as a bulwark against the sometimes treacherous, violent or seemingly chaotic forces of nature that surround us (ie, swamps, hurricanes, and floods.)

The truth is that abstract expressionism is a little too amorphous, philosophical, bipolar and close to nature for most palettes here. It is amorphous because it doesn’t claim to represent anything beyond personal expression. It’s philosophical because it investigates and exposes ideas of existence, knowledge and conduct in a language, albeit visual. Abstract Expressionism is bipolar because it asserts the primacy of surface over pictorial depth while it essentially aims to show the deepest and most primal structures of the human mind (Platonic ideals and relationships) in a thin skein of paint. It operates in paradox. Lastly, it is close to nature because like everything of nature, it is what it is. It is most adamantly not a facsimile of something else as in representational or figurative art. This is the ultimate power of Abstract Expressionism. It may allude to other things, but it never fully descends into trying to reconstruct them visually. It is a pure art of being and potential. This is due to the influence of Surrealism with its emphasis on spontaneous and automatic creation stemming from subconscious drives.

Lafayette/New Orleans artist Mallory Page is a prime example of a contemporary Louisiana artist trying to breathe new life into the aging aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism. Her work operates between the two separate schools of the style: Color Field Painting and Gestural Abstraction.  Color Field Painting descends from the line of Modernist experimentation with color that started with the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists through the Fauves to the work of Joseph Albers and Hans Hoffmann. It is concerned with presenting a unified and cohesive field of flat color – an image of monolithic, yet sensual expression. Gestural abstraction descends from the emphasis on line, expressive distortion and psychological import in the work of Van Gogh and the Northern European Expressionists, through the work of  Picasso to the work of the Surrealists. It is concerned with presenting the artwork as an arena of action, physical expression and existential struggle.

In Page’s work we find a fusion of Color Field Painting and Gestural Abstraction. Free-form swaths and drips of stained color meld with expressive scrawls of pencil, ink and pastel to form a visual language that acts as a summation of and a re-entry into the history Abstract Expressionism. Her work takes off where such abstractionists as Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly left the style.  In Page’s work, one can find a meeting point between tranquility and angst. In most of her works, the tranquility of Frankenthaler dominates. Yet, it is Page’s  minimal use of the erratic scrawl of Twombly that brings these works to life and activates them, making them more than limpid pools of dreamy color.

Page’s current body of work at the Lounge Gallery in Downtown Lafayette makes excellent use of various shades of the color blue with all of its associations with the sky, clouds, water, space, twilight, spirituality, majesty, inner-vision, dreams, tranquility, and melancholy.  Most of the work in the exhibition takes its turn showing a different face of the color blue.  In a work such as Cirrusly IV, Page imbues her canvas with the feeling of a brightly lit day with scattered clouds through her use of cerulean while Moon Movement elicits a much more nocturnal and somnambulant sensibility with its midnight blues.  Page’s Astral Series takes things even further, giving the viewer a sense fathomless voids haunting undefined space where blue descends into black.  One of the most intriguing paintings on view is Head in the Clouds. Typically the phrase is associated with a state of light and dreamy distraction, and there are certainly parts of this painting that correspond in kind. However, Page has allowed storm clouds to gather in this work as well in the form of two fields of blue-black which leak down the canvas. An incongruous scrawl in vermilion in the lower-right hand corner of the painting acts as a counterpoint to it all.

Page’s exhibition is a feast for the eyes, and it exudes a great deal of taste. This is also my only caveat. When artists choose to dive into a historical style and reintroduce the style to contemporary discourse, the hazard of not pushing the style far enough always looms on the horizon. All too often, the style of the past often becomes today’s decoration. Page’s work comes close to this edge.  However, if one cares to look closely, there is enough intelligence, innovation and fine-tuned sensibility at work here to keep the work from falling over the edge.  From this precipice, Page reaches across a gulf of time and cultural history that encompasses the past 70 years, wresting a moment of American exceptionalism into our present hour of questioning and despair. Despite the the fact that American culture was reaching an apotheosis at the time that the Abstract Expressionists were creating the art that would put the nation on the world’s cultural map, they were dealing with a tremendous amount of existential baggage following the two World Wars that scarred the first half of the 20th century.  Their inner-turmoil and anxiety mirrors ours. Perhaps this is why many artists across America and other artists beyond have returned to Abstract Expressionism in the past decade to pick-up where the elder statesmen of the movement left off.

If Page and her cohort are inclined to astral projecting at all, I hope they’re willing to continue to take us with them into a future of promise and progress, rather than just a tour of recurring angst and by-gone glory.

The exhibition “Astral” is on view in the Lounge Gallery, 402. S. Buchanan St., Lafayette, LA 70501 until May 31, 2012. One can view the exhibition during May’s Artwalk and by appointment. Contact galerist Jeffery McCollough at (917) 282-1880 for a private viewing.