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RECOMMENDED
Sandra Fiedorek,
Christopher Schade
D Berman Gallery, through Aug 4
By Wayne Alan Brenner
Austin Chronicle
Thursday,
July 5, 2001
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Sandra
Fiedorek, who you may know from her large mural above
the baggage claim area at the Austin Airport, has a series of 10
new paintings on display at the D Berman Gallery. Each painting
is a seemingly random, single-color scattering of blotches that
conjure hues like those of the sweet iMacs you find in trendier
data manipulation shops. You don't need a great deal of
intelligence to appreciate these abstractions, you can enjoy them
at face -- or, rather, eye -- value; but you may appreciate the way
they'd appeal to a creature of artificial intelligence: evocative
of
some machined emotion. Because they're so smartly high tech, is
why: The bright colors are applied to a fine mesh of stainless
steel, the mesh framed by thick sheets of glass, each work a
visual circuit of chromatic reflection and cool translucence along
the north wall of the gallery.
In stark contrast, and taking up much of the remaining walls, is
the work of Christopher Schade. Schade, once an art critic for
this city's daily paper, may still be reporting with the images here
-- but only Heaven or Schade knows the dateline. He's got
several painted collages that are reminiscent of stills from a
cartoon fistfight; you know -- where there's a flurry of dust and
speedlines, with a foot sticking out here, a fisted hand there?
Many of these are rendered with bold strokes of black or white,
with bits of paper overlaid, in two-dimensional outbursts that defy
balance. But there are also a few representational works, and the
dark realism of these images -- especially the one of a man lost at
sea, his emotion-wrought face the only pause in a vast rectangle
of painted waves -- may haunt your dreams even when your eyes
are open.
-- Wayne Alan Brenner
Through Aug 4. Summer hours: Tue-Sat, noon-5pm. D
Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe.
477-8877.www.dbermangallery.com.
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