HUDSON, New York — I didn’t count on the exhibition Phoebe Helander: In Plain Sight at Pamela Salisbury Gallery to win me over, given its conventional material, but it surely did. Helander paints nonetheless lifes in oil on wooden helps that measure round 14 by 11 inches. May these be something greater than stunning work of objects? How might the artist persuade viewers to stick with the work and mirror upon what they see? What caught my consideration was her devotion to the envisioning the subject material in time, together with two work of a candle seen from above and look at of a glass with a chipped rim.
Greater than two dozen works fill the gallery’s first ground and basement areas, all painted between 2022 and 2024. In “Ranunculus II (2024), we’re wanting down on the pale, buttery, tightly packed petals of a flower sitting snugly in a water glass. The silvery grays off to the fitting and the smooth gentle coming in from the left imbue the picture with subdued heat. After ending the portray, for no matter cause, Helander abraded the surfacing, inflicting it to develop into distressed.
With this disruptive motion, she equates the flower with the portray — she will be able to defend neither one from time’s detached passage. This consciousness removes her artwork from the frozen time during which nonetheless life work exist and reminds us that the second recreated has already come and gone.
In “Candle Burning” (2023), the fiery wick has eaten its method down the waxy yellow-orange column so {that a} collapsing wax wall encircles the flame. A single line of melting wax runs down the entrance aspect of the candle. The equation between a brushstroke and the malleable, impermanent drip of wax provides an emotional tenor to the piece. Dissipation is unavoidable, even because the painter makes an attempt to each halt and form time with every murals. Helander returns to this topic in “Candle Burning II” (2024), as if to notice that the identical topic is all the time altering; destruction is unavoidable.
In ”Espresso V” (2024), a close-up view of a cup stuffed to brim with black espresso suggests the drinker is about to have their first style. Grit and hair from the paintbrush are seen on the floor of the espresso. That refusal to make a flawless floor distinguishes Helander’s work from the technology of painterly realists that rose to prominence in New York within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, and connects with the ladies artists who dedicated themselves to observational portray during which time passing was a central characteristic: Lois Dodd, Catherine Murphy, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and, extra lately, Josephine Halvorson. On the identical time, Helander is defining a territory all her personal as a piece like “Espresso V” feedback not solely on the ephemerality of life however on the cycle of consumption and waste during which we’re caught.
The portray that almost all spoke to me was the best, most pared down work within the exhibition. The background of “Glass” (2023), behind a minimally rendered glass with a chipped rim, is break up in two by a dividing line distorted by the curve of the glass. An off-white floor takes up the decrease a part of the image airplane whereas brownish-mauve fills the higher half. The chipped rim and the austerity of the composition held my consideration. By memorializing a no-frills water glass whose distinguishing characteristic is a flaw, Helander embraces vulnerability. I feel there’s something courageous about doing that now, in a world the place the facade of flawlessness dominates each artwork and different cultural types. Helander offers us greater than a portray to take a look at; she offers us one thing to meditate upon as we dwell our day by day lives.
Phoebe Helander: In Plain Sight continues at Pamela Salisbury Gallery (362 1/2 Warren Road, Hudson, New York) by way of June 16. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.