Arcadia

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 14, 2012 at 8:34am

Curator’s Comment:  

 

 

(disclaimer: this work was recently brought to my attention by a mutual friend)

Caleb, I’m thrilled to see your work on this site.  Arcadia, and in fact all of your luscious paintings in this series captivate and enthrall with their sheer visceral expression. I admire your confident handling of color and figural abstraction.  The scenes, while quite abstract, suggest an Eden-esque garden with the disturbing undercurrent of eventual, and inevitable, expulsion. Arcadia is no more.  I find this piece especially captivating as the smallish orange figure is equivocally animal and human- perhaps representing a psyche rather than specific entity.  It intensely observes a like-colored mass, lacking in features or form.  The mass is primordial in its organic and formless presence in the lush environment.  The structure that it sits on further suggests an organic body in flux or metamorphosis- taut and stretched out across the picture plane.  Expanding on the feeling of earthly descent, the circular shapes could suggest fruit- or unknown fauna.  It is in part this disorientation that holds my attention and challenges my understanding of the unfolding narrative.