November 12, 2009

Review of Elaine Coombs Exhibition

Baxter and Cook Art Advisors at The Showplace, 2 Henry Adams Suite 358, San Francisco (415 865-0231, info@baxterandcook.com, Holly Baxter, Jana Cook) is showing the paintings of Elaine Coombs, October 1 to November 20, 2009.

Trees? In literary theory (first in Aristotle) the act of representing an image or idea is generally regarded as its presentation for a second time, with the intention of the representation replicating or interpreting the original. From this perspective, the paintings by Elaine Coombs on exhibit at Baxter & Cook are not representational. What we see is actually a third presentation – and a original development within an aesthetic aimed at creating variant forms of representation.

Coombs first captures the image photographically, then prints and observe it in its secondary form, and, finally, translates and re-presents it in the medium of paint on canvas. This is not merely a technical point as the results are startling. Taking the already flattened photographic image she intensifies the effect by using flat paint. The reduction in color variation which comes with the photographic process interacts unpredictably with a “pixilation” achieved not electronically but by painstaking application of paint in tiny monochromatic patches.

As one ponders what one is actually seeing-not trees as previously known-and how to place Coombs arresting style in historical context, another issue complicates matters. The distance from which one views her paintings, especially those numbered 3 and 8 in this exhibition, greatly alters their impact. The images either dissolve into a sort of deliberate flatness when viewed at close range or gain a sense of grand scale when seen from a distance.

However we come to terms with them, these paintings are iconic, enigmatic, resistant to interpretation, and definitely worthy of more than one viewing.

Harlan Sadberry