John Sabraw
Craig McDaniel: More War Stories
John Sabraw at Thomas McCormick and Jefferson Little at Lyons Wier both address the alienation between human beings and objects by depicting the lush surfaces of one or a few simple things (a gear is about as high-tech as we get from Sabraw) in isolated spaces that focus attention on singular objects–a welcome contrast to our culture’s image glut. Building up their surfaces with painstaking and exquisite care, each gives bright pieces of cloth or kitschy toys an almost spiritual presence. Objects have a preternatural luminosity, as if the brush had caressed each millimeter of the surface and were now inviting the eye to do the same.
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One common argument against illusionistic art is that one might as well look at a photograph or, better yet, the actual object–that art should not offer a substitute. But Sabraw’s and Little’s work is engaging partly because neither artist is trying to fool anyone into mistaking his objects for the real thing. Indeed, each includes a thoroughly modernist acknowledgment of painting’s limitations. The resulting works in no way claim to reunite us with the world of things but rather articulate a tension between the desire for sensual union with the world and the adult acknowledgment that that’s impossible. They paint objects with a vividness that reminds us of what we’ve lost, while other elements recall the artificiality of painting–reminding us that what we see is merely a human construction. This self-awareness prevents us from mistaking the dream for the real but doesn’t completely rob the dream of its seductiveness.
Sabraw’s statement notwithstanding, his pictures seem to me as much about the process of examining objects as about the objects themselves. Examining the act of looking, he pairs his contemplative faith in things with a strange emptiness. L-7 shows a white panel, perhaps just prepared for painting, nailed to the wall. But the nails are causing the panel to crack–and it looks as if these cracks are just the beginning of a process of devolution. The confinement that contemplation imposes on an object also inevitably separates us from it–yet the purity of Sabraw’s blank white remains seductively beautiful.
There are other contradictions within his scenes. Still Life With Science Fiction pairs an astronaut who seems planted on the ground with a tree that’s levitating, making a joke on weightlessness but also asserting the artist’s power. In the miniature dream-theater he’s created, Little can do what he likes–even place his figures in physically impossible arrangements. The picture frames themselves are beveled inward, suggesting the architecture of a theater. And in Still Life With Gravity–the only work in the show on canvas–Little paints red curtains around his two objects, a road sign and a toy rocket ship, placing them onstage. These references to theater both foster illusionism and destroy it, inviting us “in” yet emphasizing the constructed nature of what we see. Little’s subtle, resonant colors for these kitschy plastic objects also offer an implicit critique of a culture that encourages the quick glance over a contemplative look.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): “Proper Procedure” by John Sabraw; “Still Life with Science Fiction” by Jefferson Little; “News from the Front” (detail) by Craig mcDaniel.
