Art review: ‘Surreal by Nature’ exhibit is beautifully creepy at Akron Soul Train
The art movement of surrealism grew from revolutionary and consciousness-transforming roots just after World War I.
While it no longer has the counterculture, anti-colonialist dictums it once espoused, surrealism retains its intention of provoking deeper meaning and thought through a twisting or even sideways take on how the world appears or seems to appear.
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“Surreal by Nature,” on view through Feb. 12 at the Akron Soul Train Gallery, features the work of Northeast Ohio artists Jonah Jacobs and Maria Uhase. This is a thought-provoking exhibit that highlights the work of two artists who “dive deep” into their subjects and materials in ways that inform how their work is made and in what the work is communicating.
Both artists explore the natural world, but they do it in vastly different ways. Maria Uhase, a 2019 University of Akron graduate based in Wadsworth, paints in a hyper-realistic style and focuses on developing surreal relationships between animals and plants. Uhase’s paintings are familiar, beautiful, serene and even somewhat creepy.
For the works in this exhibit, Uhase experimented with the collaboration between human creativity and artificial intelligence by using a neural network program to aid in generating new concepts. For the exhibit, she input text into the program, which generated additonal text about the paintings that she was creating.
The text and the paintings relate but are not direct interpretations of each other and this is thought provoking and a little disarming. Also thought provoking is the way in which the artist depicts the animals she represents. Extra eyes or open wounds that often have vegetation growing out of them are repeated elements throughout almost all of her works in the show.
“They Rule The Kingdom They Built” is an oil and acrylic on canvas the features three white ratlike creatures sitting on a bunch of branches. The four-eyed rats all have long tails that appear to have knotted together. Small flowers grow out of holes or wounds in the rats. The text that was generated with this work is more story-like and that adds to the impact. It forces you to contemplate the visual art and the text.
“Premonition of a Repetition” is also an oil and acrylic on canvas that features two birds intertwined around a tree branch that has antlike insects crawling into mud-packed tubes and transforming into winged insects. A vinelike plant grows out of a wound on the chest of one of the birds and has wrapped itself around the other bird. Both birds seem to be about to fly off or perhaps about to try to catch some of the insects. This is a beautiful painting that has the look and feel of a nature study if it weren’t for the subtle touches that move it in a completely different direction.
Jonah Jacobs is a self-taught artist from Cleveland. He uses unconventional materials including oatmeal, plaster, sand, yarn, gravel and dryer sheets that he layers on cardboard that he burns and forms into organic shapes. These sculptures are then dipped and sprayed with dyes. Jacob’s work is influenced by the gnarls and microscopic structures found in nature.
“Internode #1” is one of the larger works by Jacobs on display and is made of fire-sculpted cardboard, dye, paint, oatmeal, cotton swabs and glitter. It a large oval-shaped work that hangs on the wall and is longer up and down than it is side to side.
Crusty, organic, coral or even perhaps volcanic shapes make up this sculpture that ranges in the center a yellow and orange that then moves to red and then brown as you work toward the outside edge of the sculpture.
This piece's rough texture that is created in part by the oatmeal and cardboard in combination and the bright and vibrant colors used to paint it help to create a presence of something that took a long time to form.
Surrealism now has an over 100-year history. It has transformed from its more political roots and has become more like what Sigmund Freud described as “something that seems both familiar and strange at the same time.”
“Surreal by Nature” certainly fits this apt description.
Contact Anderson Turner at haturner3@gmail.com.
Details
Exhibit: “Surreal by Nature”
Place: Akron Soul Train Gallery, 191 S. Main St., Akron
Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wedneday to Saturday through Feb. 12
More info: 330-573-0517 or https://www.akronsoultrain.org/
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Art review: ‘Surreal by Nature’ at Akron Soul Train
