Essay by Dominique Nahas

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>BARRY</B></div> <div> <B>MASTELLER</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="paintings.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Paintings"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">PAINTINGS</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="artist_statement.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Artist Statement"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ARTIST STATEMENT</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="biography___upcoming_exhibitions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Biography / Upcoming Exhibitions"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">BIOGRAPHY / UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_donald_kuspit.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ESSAY BY DONALD KUSPIT"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY DONALD KUSPIT</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY DOMINIQUE NAHAS</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_kathleen_moody.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Essay by Kathleen Moody"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY KATHLEEN MOODY</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_marcelle_polednik.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Essay By Marcelle Polednik"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY MARCELLE POLEDNIK</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="artworks_magazine_article.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ArtWorks Magazine Article"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ArtWorks MAGAZINE ARTICLE 2008</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="archives.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Archives"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ARCHIVES</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="biography___upcoming_exhibitions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Biography / Upcoming Exhibitions"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">CONTACT</B></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" width="100%" BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Ecstatic Reserve in the Work of Barry Masteller</B></div> <bR> <div> The shimmering bimorphic forms of Barry Masteller's landscape paintings predominate the artist's work. This is not to say that Masteller has ignored urban scenes or the use of hard-edged geometry.  In his Boulevard series, for example, the artist has arranged city streets and apartment buildings, along with the silent movements of silhouetted Hopperesque people seen through store or apartment windows, to create a sense of community and isolation. In another body of work entitled Moon Sequence the artist has gone out of his way to investigate geometric repetition by painting naturalistic scenes as sequential events. We see the differing position of moon and stars over varying dusky silhouettes of trees in Moon Sequence 6 (2004), for example, where an entire image consists of nine panels stacked vertically in sets of three. In Moon Sequence 2 (2003) the artist lays out, predella-like, a horizontal ordering of three small panels. When read from left to right the work creates a narrative of shifting perspectives of land and night sky, as if we were viewing several frames of a film at one time.    </div> <bR> <div> Deep vistas of land, water and sky, however, are where Barry Masteller finds his essential voice. His sensory landscapes, all imaginary, are immediately identifiable through his signature use of saturated colors such as auburns, crimsons, browns and ochres. The varying light effects in his work recall the glowing effects in the works of Rembrandt and Turner, the charcoal drawings of Seurat, as well as the early-century California Tonalists.</div> <bR> <div> To achieve his chiaroscuro effects the artist uses a light, delicate touch in which brushes and rags are used to apply pigments and washes as well as to wipe away wet areas of the canvas. Mark making and image-formation and spatial tension, therefore, are created as much by accretion as by reduction. The essential drama that Masteller suggests through his deft use of light is cyclic: perpetual emergence and dissolution from gauzy indeterminance into anticipatory consciousness.  His paintings, irradiated with light, are seemingly at a standstill, mysteriously elusive and ecstatic. In the works, the suffused contours of our world as we know it are present but they seem wholly other, as in Earth and Sky 479, (2003). This is not surprising, as the artist's indwelling worlds --- not inhabitable by man - appear to be undergoing deep-rooted, slow change. </div> <bR> <div> Masteller wants us to participate in his intensified perception of objects and the space around them, in the transcendental sublime. His image making compels us to take stock of primary dimensions of sensible phenomena, which open up and then dissipate into the realms of invisibility and the hidden. These immanent fields of possibilities, paradoxically, seem to rise up from within the earth itself, confronting us with an outward sense of harmonious fullness which seems to close in on itself, as in Earth and Sky 470 (2003). In a mid-ground of reflected water there lies a concealed reserve of time and space which pulses secretly throughout the artist's work, often punctuated by the silhouettes of round-shouldered trees, as in Earth and Sky 498 (2004) which serve as surrogates for the human form. This imagistic play is clearly not so much a depiction of the actual physical world held in suspension as much as a reflection of the painter's varying states of mind. </div> <bR> <div> Barry Masteller's ongoing Earth and Sky series asks that we reconsider, in pictorial terms, what we take for granted. When we see a horizon line shimmering in the distance of his bucolic scenes we are not meant to train our eyes and thoughts solely and exclusively to time that is to be but also to be aware of hidden realms within his work. Subliminally, we join a dimension of absence, which is literally grounded in the artist's work, as we consider the terrain that lies below the mounded earth in the foreground, expressed as unseen.  Similarly we become slowly aware and marvelously compelled by a sense of the unknowable in the area which lies beyond the horizon in each of his paintings --- implied but undepictable regions of time and space --- made manifest through the suggestion of aura which permeates the earth.   </div> <div>           </div> <div> Wonderment regarding the hidden face of the order of things seems to preoccupy Barry Masteller. He captures that feeling in his paintings. In his notes he writes: “ With the passing of the years I feel a greater connection to the earth, especially to light and the way the physical world responds to light with illumination, reflection and emanation.” </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Dominique Nahas is an art critic and independent curator based in Manhattan. He is also a regular reviewer for Art in America and the editor of d'Art International</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>  <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Verdana" >All text and images contained on this site copyright Barry Masteller 2008</FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div>      <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Verdana" > <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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