Play your Lace

Robin Rice on Visual Art: Encantamientos/Enchantments at Painted Bride Arts Center

by Robin Rice

Guest curator Anabelle Rodriguez-Gonzalez's inspired pairing at the Painted Bride — Rodriguez Calero and Henry Bermudez — looks gorgeous and generates a rich, thoughtful visual dialogue. Both artists are best categorized as painters, but each moves in a different direction beyond traditional painting: Calero layers in external elements, while Bermudez pointedly pierces his surfaces.

Click Here For More Images

Using a technique she calls "acrollage," Calero employs a hauntingly somber palette. Rather frontal symmetrical compositions anchor freely painted color areas and lyrical decorative counterpoint. The moody intensity of Francisco Goya, in particular, comes to mind in works like Cuerpo Y Alma (pictured); Moorish tile work and Spanish lace are suggested by the intricate flourishes Calero superimposes over almost every piece of her puzzle.

The paintings of Venezuelan Henry Bermudez also suggest lace, but a much less delicate kind. Bermudez relates his work to tattoos: "[I find] a celebration of love in the way tribes in the Amazon and around the world use the tattoo for decoration and for ceremonies," he says. Even in contemporary Philadelphia, "I remember how impressed I have been looking at the tattoos of young people in ordinary places like Whole Foods. I think they show off cultural attitudes that have been forgotten in this society."

Three years of passionate work went into Bermudez's show, which features labor-intensive craftsmanship with a strong message behind it. The French Kiss, a primal encounter between two mythic animals with human bodies, measures 9 by 10 feet, and is composed entirely of curling tendrils painstakingly cut out and painted dimensionally. The flat blackness of The Four Sad Tigers suits a wrenching image that suggests Bermudez's concerns about our planet's obsession with environmentally unfriendly amenities like cars and air conditioning. "I don't want to be protected in the bubble of a studio," he says, "but to make people reflect and think."

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Encantamientos/Enchantments | Through March 14, Painted Bride Arts Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, paintedbride.org