‘The Group of Twelve’
This group show's beauty brings a coolness to drive the summer heat away
Reviewed by Wayne Alan Brenner, Fri., July 29, 2011
'The Group of Twelve'
Davis Gallery, 837 W. 12th, 477-4929
Through Sept. 3
You want to see a variety of art forms, a plethora of mediums, a surpassing collection of visual and textural treasures right now. You want to feast your peepers on aesthetic brilliance
from a diversity of artists, and you want to do it in air-conditioned luxury in just one elegant place, yes, you do, because it's damned hot out here in what's slowly but surely becoming part of the Great Southwestern Desert of the United States.
But you want that art fix, citizen. That's why you go to the Davis Gallery right now, over there near the Tavern on 12th (it's air-conditioned, too, so they say). That's why you improve your afternoon with this summer show, "The Group of Twelve," in the Davis Gallery's intimate rooms. You get to see paintings in oils, in acrylics; you get the vastness of vistas limned in pastels, landscapes created with pigment and professional care; you get the three-dimensional collage work of Joseph Hammer, the gritty urban realism in the large paintings of David Leonard, the delicate and undulating wooden sculptures of Caprice Pierucci.
You don't want something freaky and brain-strainingly conceptual right now. That might be your cup of tea once in a blue moon, but right now the moon is its usual gray and white and ghostly self. Except it's daytime, yes, and you'll escape the blazing eye of the sun and see some of Sandra Langston's narrative oils, Dianne Grammer's painted visions of Lady Bird Lake, Randall Reid's geometric amalgamations of salvaged surfaces and colors. You'll be like, "Ah, this is the stuff." You'll be like, "This is what my eyes and soul have been needing." You'll make a note to tell your friends about the show because they, too, would appreciate such beautiful works as these.
I'm doing that right now, myself: I'm making a note; I'm telling my friends; I'm telling you.
The Davis Gallery brings the coolness of its artists to drive this hot summer away.
