Sean Mellyn
Jack Tilton / Anna Kustera Gallery, New York
Through November 25
Sean Mellyn’s oil paintings and sculptures emanate pure color onto the walls of the gallery, which for once loses the austere, minimalist atmosphere typical of exhibition spaces, to take on the appearance of a fun fair.
Close-ups of rosy-cheeked children stare out from Mellyn’s paintings with big, curious eyes, daring us to maintain a steady gaze and leaving us in a state of “psychological subjection”. The ample size of the canvas adds to this effect and emphasizes further the bright, explosive color scheme. The central character in Dakota (2000) is a little girl with blonde locks and sea-blue eyes, who seduces the viewer with an intense, sensual gaze wholly inconsistent with her age. The little, red haired boy with the impish grin in Huevos Ranchero (2000), on the other hand, pulls a cheeky face to goad us.
The exhibition is dominated by the large-scale painting It’s a Beautiful Day (2000). The work represents a child laughing blithely while objects pop out of his head. Mellyn extends the effect out beyond the canvas, however, by pinning a variety of the items depicted to the walls and floor like materialized thoughts. The work explores how the two-dimensionality of painting can give shape and form to objects that, breaking away from the surfaces which “made” them, integrate with the space around them.
There is no trace of narrative, however. Mellyn is only interested in challenging our notions about the traditional limits of painting, and offering the spectator a new key to interpreting his Pop-Surrealist artwork.
Two other works on show develop along the same lines: Embryonic (2000) and Pockets of Darkness (2000). One depicts a lit electric lamp, whose plastic flex extends beyond the edges of the painting and hangs down the gallery wall. The second shows a flock of birds flying over a landscape. The image is stretched out across three further canvases gradually diminishing in size.
Micaela Giovannotti
Translation by Rosalind Furness
