Frances Lerner
Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, California
Recommendation by DeWitt Cheng
Frances Lerner, ''Family Business,'' 2012, oil on wooden panel, 34 x 44''.
Continuing through October 20, 2012
The increasing convergence of art with fashion, entertainment,
technology and instant gratification
may now well be unstoppable, but the exceptions to that rule, serious
painters like Frances Lerner,
suggest that art history may yet survive the general slide into cultural
amnesia. The small oil paintings
on panel that made such a strong impression in the 2010 "New Images
of Man and Woman" group
show (at Berkeleys Alphonse Berber Gallery) are back in force in
this beautifully installed solo show,
"Minor Characters and Sympathetic Criminals," featuring around
two dozen eccentric works that are
full of feeling.
Employing the same puppets acquired at flea markets
as before, Lerner (who is also a social
worker and illustrator) creates enigmatic narratives that recall satirical
novels about victims of social
turmoil, namely refugees, not exactly a dead issue these days. One thinks
of Haseks "Good Soldier
Schweik" and Gunter Grass "The Tin Drum" as literary
analogues, and of Callots "The Miseries of
War" as a visual ancestor or precedent. Lerners Old Master
technique, grisaille underpainting glazed
with color, results in a subdued palette of beiges, grays and greens,
with brighter color accents,
reminiscent of the British visionary, Stanley Spencer. But her rendering
of the doll-like figures in their
ramshackle environments is soft edged, almost plush. Lerner infuses her
bravura painting with a rich
blend of innocence, menace and enchantment.
Jack Fischer Gallery
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