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11

Oct

Craig Cully: Ardent Proponents of Iridescence

Craig Cully: Ardent Proponents of Iridescence at Projects Gallery,  Philadelphia, PA

by Jean Reece Wilkey

When we think of vanitas, skulls and candles with snuffed flames come to mind. Meant to remind us of the brevity of life and vanity, the memento mori and vanitas themes have been popular with artists from Dutch still life painters to Audrey Flack’s pop updates to Gabriel Orozco’s sensuous checkerboard skull, Black Kites (1997). On the surface Cully’s work may seem more related to the bling of Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull, “For the love of God” whose vanitas imagery both questions our attachment to the material world and sports more than 8000 diamonds, symbols of our obsession with materiality and adornment, and perhaps, of a desire even in this century to buy heavenly “favors”.

Large Kiss Purple Orange

Cully explores vanitas from the consumerist veil of pop culture and kitch. In speaking directly to audiences he says are “conditioned by the ubiquity of Hallmark imagery,” his view of life’s fleeting nature includes the ‘transience of pleasure’ rather than a narrow or more traditional religious view. Witness the chocolate “kisses” rendered large and luscious.

A contemporary painter who lovingly attends to the surface in achieving the magic of implied textures, whose hyper-real images reflect color that  is at once bright and right, he has shifted his focus from depicting human interactions to focus on alluding to the consequences of human actions.

His luscious reflections remind me of painters like Jeanette Pasin Sloan, [http://www.williamhavugallery.com/category/jeanette-pasin-sloan/] and the complexity of his composition in Iridescence in Pink, has a congested and appealing feel akin to works by David Le Chapelle. [http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/02/david-lachapelles-twist-on-baroque-still-life-paintings/]

Iridescence iin Pink

Unlike LeChapelle, Cully’s work retains a casual and random order, a sort of found-composition embodying a certain defiant appeal rather than a contrived arrangement. He controls the surface with great attention to detail while allowing it to subjugate the objects, which are subsumed into an abstract controlled chaos of color and texture.

Cully’s work is currently on display as part of the Arizona Biennial [http://www.tucsonmuseumofart.org/exhibitions/arizona-biennial-2013/] in Tucson through September 29th. Ardent Proponents of Iridescence opens at Projects Gallery [http://www.projectsgallery.com/Cully.html] in Philadelphia on September 6 through October 19th. His work can also be seen on his website. [http://www.craigcully.com/]

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