|
Dr. Janna Stern Aside from the paintings displayed
here, Dr. Janna Stern has, over than a two year period ending in 2000,
created a remarkable series of collages entitled "Measure for Measure: An
Artistic Exploration of the Mythology of Eating Disorders," which has been
exhibited widely at college and university campuses. This series tackled
the insidiously pervasive epidemic of eating disorders. There is so much
focus on the body in the modern world that mind, spirit and feelings are
starved. In her newest series (2003), "Becoming," Stern brings up to
visual surface issues of what we are becoming as people in the
contemporary world. In the words of Dr. Stern: "Disassociation comes
before embodiment." These are primary process artworks, rich and raw
creative juices flow freely without fear of judgment, criticism or
rejection. They are primal images, pictures that can enrich the viewer's
experience of the human condition. In Dr. Stern's words, "A primordial
object that holds some interest or emotion for me is choreographed into a
dance with the canvas." After UCLA Medical School in 1968, assemblage,
expressionist art and collage were the launching vehicles for Dr. Stern's
emerging visual and captivating images as a unique body of work both in
its subject matter and visual content. Her fusion and infusion of her
artwork is expressed with an exceptional awareness of the human psyche and
the unconscious. What impresses me the most of Dr. Stern's work is the
deep psychological and psychodynamic understanding of the human psyche as
it intertwines with the mechanisms of defense and such modern behaviors
commonly known today as eating disorder.
- Joan Lachkar
|
Charles Sherman Charles Sherman is part Viking, part Gypsy
and 100 percent Jewish. His ethnicity is Mesopotamian - American.
On a dark, stormy night in 1993, he arrived out of nowhere at the
Robert Cunningham Sculpture Studio in Culver City and started making
abstract art out of clay. For 46 years before that, his interest was ego -
driven performance art.
Sherman has studied the lives and techniques of twentieth - century
artists and the old masters. He has done his research at libraries,
universities and museums around the world. Mainly, however, he attempts to
learn from everyone he comes in contact with.
Sherman is technically skilled and highly creative, but what inspires
him most is the love of the creative work that he does.
"The essence of art is that it is a verb. Art is not a noun," Sherman
says.
Sherman does know his work is spiritual, religious and he only recently
is aware of the psychological implications. He appreciates my
association to the "Lucite Ring" and other works with circles as an experience
in "O" as outlined by British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. It
also reminds me of my work with couples - how couples stay in painful
circular dance that goes 'round and 'round without ever reaching any
conflict resolution. Sherman's "Escher Clock" reminds me of the "Fifty
Minute Hour" and the "Klein Cup," the importance of mother as the feeding object, moving away
from the breast to a transitional space and transitional object.
- Joan Lachkar
|
Richard Klix
Speaking of "Reflections," Richard Klix comments:
"This painting can be seen as a psyche looking back at itself in the
reflecting "waters" of the unconscious. The nudity and natural outdoor
setting symbolize our basic being and the stars in the depth serve as a
backdrop for the reflected aura which may be seen as our spiritual self in
its cosmic setting. It is my belief that the greatest art paradoxically
alludes to what cannot be seen. I use the aura as an obvious metaphor for
the more mysterious aspects of our projective self.
"I began painting more than sixty years ago and have had
many influences including Blake, Goya and such contemporary masters as
well as Joseph Campbell, the Mythologist, Alan Watt, Freud, Jung, and
others."
"Klix's works are a reflection of not only many
artists, but an integration and compilation of many philosophers and
psychoanalysts as well as many other literary scholars."
- Joan Lachkar
|
