| By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin |
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And yet, on view together currently at D. Berman Gallery, those differing approaches make for a pleasant synergy of comparison and contrast. The endless expanse of the West Texas landscape inspires Maratta. But forget reverent, colorful homages. Instead the Austin-based Maratta gives quirky graphite drawings all only one inch tall yet some that sprawl four or five feet in length. With meticulous draftsmanship, Maratta renders the stuff of stark rural scenes — barns, highway signs, dust devils, windmills, birds on a power line, endless flat fields — in miniature. The detail is compelling. And like you do in order to experience the wide open plains, so do you have to travel at length across Maratta’s long drawings in order to see them in their entirety. Diminutive as these landscapes may be, they nevertheless cleverly represent the vast openness of the West Texas plains. Like Maratta, McAuley also jiggers with preconceived notions of how place is artistically represented. McAuley, who studied at the University of Texas and now lives in New York, focuses on the most quotidian and downright anonymous locations and spaces. Tire tracks through snow disappear into darkness in one small graphite drawing. A floor lamp barely brightens an almost bare wall in one of McAuley’s darkly luminous oil paintings. In another, a ceiling light casts a glare into the corner of a room while the rest remains dark. These rooms, those tire tracks, could be anywhere. Or everywhere. Never mind the exact the locale — it’s not important because McAuley delivers the emotional potency of place.
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