Review: Charles Gick's 'Involving the Sky'
by Susan Watt Grade
Indianapolis Art Center; through Nov. 27.
Charles Gick, whose paintings, sculptures, and videos fit like an installation in the Hurt and Clowes Galleries, makes the upper atmosphere seem palpable through depictions of skies.
Repetitive layering of materials such as encaustic, gauze, and plaster propose Gick's determination to not just represent the sky, but to recreate its physicality.
"Cloud Repair," a poetic diptych, juxtaposes a conventionally painted puffy white cloud and blue sky next to a canvas of thickly textured blue and white wax with dense overlays of hard lined tape. Sky is deconstructed here - if not reconstructed.
"Clamped Cloud" butts two different sky interpretations together - a more traditionally painted atmosphere paired with a flat, graphic panel showing a Pop-like approach - joining them with an antique metal clamp placed like a horizon line to interrupt the imagery.
Gick perhaps pays homage to cloud paintings of Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks; both artists reflect on shifts, impermanence, and contrast between approaches or materials.
Most evocative is the video "Persistence," in which meditative footage of slow moving clouds flanked by profiles of two women shows a rhythmic exchange of blowing and breathing, suggesting one can move the clouds.
Related Locations
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Indianapolis Art Center
- 820 E. 67th St., Indianapolis Broad Ripple IN
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317-255-2464
- www.indplsartcenter.org
- (based on 1 user review)
