“The Travelers”, Gina Pearlin
423 25th Street, Oakland
The evening’s weather was gloriously warm and summery for April’s Oakland Art Murmur & Oakland First Friday, and the streets were hopping. After wandering up and down Telegraph Avenue where throngs of folks sauntered past food stands, musicians, and dancing revelers, I turned past a large group of drummers at the intersection of 25th Street. The party atmosphere was fun and full of life, but I was keen to see some art.
I visited Mercury 20 Gallery, Manna Gallery, and The Orchard before stepping in to Fourth Wall Gallery to peep the show I was most curious about: “The Travelers,” a collection of 29 small oil paintings by Gina Pearlin. It was my last chance to see the exhibit before it closed, and it both delighted and intrigued me far beyond what I’d expected.
A sense of exquisite melancholy hangs in the atmospheres of Pearlin’s haunting little paintings, each with an average size of around 7 x 7 inches. Tiny figures in eerily quiet, somber scenes never connect with one another in the subtle and precise tableaux they occupy. The figures dwell within their moody, solemn habitats as though dazed, bored, or severely depressed. But there’s also a feeling of surprising humanity, despite the human disconnection that’s portrayed.
The profound, lovely loneliness in Pearlin’s paintings is rendered with great detail, every shadow, cloud, water wavelet, concrete seam, or fabric wrinkle meticulously perfect. The attention to detail is stunning. Given Pearlin’s exactitude, it’s no wonder that before she creates a painting she first fashions a three-dimensional diorama utilizing figurines and miniature buildings used for making model railroad scenery. She photographs these dioramas carefully and with precise lighting which she then paints in oil on panels, using the photos as a template.
One of these models was displayed alongside her paintings inside a plexiglass box, a beautiful Spanish colonial revival style railroad station which she used to create “Station” (both pictured above). It’s a rather bleak work, where two figures travel the station’s platform in opposite directions. Like the other paintings in the show, the lilliputian people depicted never interact, despite their proximity to one another.
Pearlin’s paintings not only invite the viewer to look closely because of their diminutive size, they allow your eye to determine what is happening in a scene: who the figures are and where they might be; what they’re doing. The foursquare nature of the compositions allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. I found this to be great design: the viewer’s brain entering into the paintings’ mystery to create a story.
Among my favorites was “On the Rooftop 3” where a lone female figure stands on a rooftop beside garments and sheets that are hung on a clothesline at what looks like twilight. She’s not hanging the clothes, but merely standing, gazing outward with her back to the viewer. Did she just finish a household chore? Is she on the roof for privacy, a moment to herself? The possibilities are myriad and intellectually juicy.
Another was “Bosch Building” in which what looks like a mother and her child walk down a sidewalk outside a structure with signage for the German company Bosch. She carries a bag in one hand, holding the child’s hand in the other. There’s a kind of sadness to it that’s irresistible.
Pearlin has a fascination with dreams and hypnotherapy. She states that her paintings “are reflections of the underlying thoughts, feelings, and dilemmas that I have experienced during this personal, collective, and planetary time of transition. Rather than illustrating a pre-formed concept or meaning, I let the painting develop like a dream, leaving the meaning open to interpretation."
The interpretation of her paintings—for me at least—was a delight. ‘Why don’t the figures engage with one another?’ was the idea that formed most often in my mind. It was wonderful to make-up stories about why they all seemed so isolated; and where they were going, what their names were, where they live, etc. That’s the beauty of Pearlin’s work: the multivalent mysteries they contain and their encouragement to superimpose one’s own consciousness on them.
It’s disarming, and deeply humane.
