Works by Will Maxen and Bradley Kerl
Glassel Gallery
Baton Rouge
Through March 14
A 68x110 painting of a fence on one side, and figures running through a blue field on the other: The newest exhibit at the LSU’s downtown gallery seeks to find common ground between the work of two faculty members, Will Maxen and Bradley Kerl.
At first glance, the two artists’ styles don’t have that much in common. Maxen’s most striking pieces are brightly colored compositions which are like abstract time lapsed photos with repeating figures and bursts of color like a dream or being underwater. Kerl’s work features sharper lines between shapes. Standing in the middle of the gallery, the expansive no man’s land between the art, one can feel a little conflicted about what to look at.
Upon further reflection, it’s clear what the curators see in the two artists. Despite their different styles, both artists feature windows and hyper-saturated colors using similar materials in the work displayed here, offering a peek into an experience. The middle ground between the art is looking not just at the other art, but through it to what the artists saw and are trying to show us.
In “Tenderloin (Self-Portrait at the Phoenix)” (2020), Kerl paints himself standing in a plain bedroom, looking out the window at the foliage outside. The most striking part is the way that light feels like it’s coming off the canvas. The room is dark but the world outside looks like it’s almost glowing. The foliage is a little larger than life, the pool’s water is a hyper saturated blue. It’s not what lockdown looked like, it’s what lockdown felt like – that the real world was so close yet so far away, and what used to be normal suddenly looked almost magical. Similarly, Kerl’s “SLAT (Mr. Chuck’s Falcon)” shows a fence with what is presumably a red car through the gaps between fence boards. Due to the light and color choices, the emphasis is on the part we can’t really see all of, and not what seems to be the main subject of the painting at first glance.
On Maxen’s side, there’s another huge window painting. It also features a dark room, this one with no discernable details and a window to the sky above which has a distinct green hue to it. The rest of his work is less window centric but there’s something surreal about his work which also invites people to look through it. The dreamy hues of hyper saturated color force people to stop and examine further, and there’s more than meets the eye right away.
“The Middle” is the work that both artists have done to find the middle ground between them, but it invites the audience to come into that space and look back out at the world around them. It’s like the artists are saying, “Here we are. Now, what are you gonna do?”
