Bill Rades at Art on Center
Review by Alec Clayton published in the Weekly Volcano, Nov. 26, 2006
'Marine Journal, Yellow #6' gouache on
museum board 4 5/8" x 3 5/8”
by Bill Rades
Bill Rades has a treasure trove of no more than half a dozen images that he repeats in varying combinations in the 33 little gouache paintings now showing at Art on Center Gallery.
Stand just inside the doorway to the gallery and scan the walls, and you’ll think each of these paintings are the same. But they’re not. They’re all tiny, some three-by-four inches and some four-by-six inches (toss in a few quarter inches). They are matted and framed identically, and are evenly spaced around the gallery walls. One has the feeling that if the gallery were twice as big or four times as big, Rades would still be able to fill the walls with his endless variations on the same motifs. (In art school they teach the value of variety within repetition. Rades has taken this concept just about as far as it can go.)
But there is a limit. Five of the paintings are actually quite different than the other 28. They are earlier paintings done in 2004 (the rest are dated 2005 and 2006) and appear to be Rades’ first attempts to find the themes he’s been working on since. Each of these five early paintings features a tightly woven web of curvilinear forms over a soft background. The foreground shapes are green with black outlines. They look like French curves, spaghetti, strands of wire, and decorative moldings such as might be found on the capital of a Corinthian column, all wound together in tightly meshed layers. These shapes float over backgrounds of softly blended blues and purples. The foreground shapes are solid, with crisp edges; the backgrounds are as amorphous as clouds and water. The contrasts between hard and soft forms are interesting and the colors are seductive, if a little too dark and muted. But there seems to be something missing. Either they need to be larger -- much, much larger, or there needs to be more variety of shapes and colors.
In the later works, Rades answers this perceived need by throwing in more variety. Added to the abstract curvilinear shapes are a tile pattern of diamond shapes, mostly black, with transparent areas between the diamond shapes; and more recognizable images including a strange little green cartoon lizard or dinosaur, anthropomorphic cartoon characters that look a lot like Mickey Mouse and Daisy Duck, and the silhouetted black shapes of sail boats and palm trees. There is also a much greater color range in the later works. The backgrounds are mostly warm colors: red, yellow and orange, and the foreground colors are cooler blues and greens. Background colors are applied wet-on-wet and allowed to puddle, while the foreground shapes are more solid, with definite outlines. What was purely abstract in the earlier works become signs and symbols in the later ones. Buried within the curvilinear forms are letters and stylized snake figures that remind me of figureheads on ancient sailing craft.
The silhouetted palm trees and sailboats indicate a South Sea motif. Most, if not all (I didn’t read all the titles) are labeled as part of a series called "Marine Journal" -- for example: "Marine Journal, Gauguin’s Sea," "Marine Journal, Yellow #6" and "Marine Journal, Purple Sky."
There is a tremendous depth of space in these paintings -- not the illustrational space of perspective, but the illusion of burying into layer after layer. The colors are rich. The combination of abstract forms and recognizable images, and the intricacies of pattern grab and hold attention. This is a show worth seeing, although I think the artist might have gone as far as he can go with these particular visual games. I’d really like to see where he might go next. This exhibition runs through Nov. 11. Coming up next is a show of abstract paintings by Frank d'Ippolito. Art on Center is open Wednesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment (call 253-627-8180). They’re located at 1604 Center St.
© 2006 by Alec Clayton