Encaustic paintings and computer-generated landscapes at the Anderson Gallery

Ancient techniques and modern technology form the basis of the compelling exhibitions featured at the VCU School of the Arts Anderson Gallery this fall.

The exhibitions, “The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic,” which presents the work of eight contemporary artists working in the medium of encaustic, and “Landscapes without Memory: Photographs by Joan Fontcuberta,” featuring large-scale prints of landscape images generated by computer software, will be shown at the Anderson Gallery on the VCU campus from Sept. 19 to Dec. 7. The exhibitions open with a public reception on Sept. 19 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.

Reni Gower, a professor of painting and printmaking at VCU, organized “The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic” and her work is included in the exhibit, which has appeared also at Ingram Studio Galleries at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.; the UTSA Gallery at the University of Texas-San Antonio; the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas and the Emerson Gallery, McLean Project for the Arts in McLean, Va.

“While my personal interest in the ancient art of encaustic goes back more than 30 years, I curated this exhibition to showcase the diverse and amazing work being created in the medium today,” Gower says. “The show has traveled to four other venues over the past two years, so I am thrilled that is has finally arrived at VCU.”

Encaustic’s roots trace back more than 2,000 years, but it is not in wide use today – the United States has just four manufacturers of encaustic paint, Gower says. Still, Gower has seen signs of a revival among artists. More experimenting with it, more awareness of its qualities.

Gower is clearly transfixed by the medium.

“It’s fragrant and visceral and hot,” she says. “You use big tools and little tools. It’s very forgiving, versatile. It’s very easy to be seduced by it.”  

The process, she says, is much like a cooking show – thus the exhibition title’s nod to the popular Iron Chefs program. The exhibition features the work of artists exploring the formal, technical and conceptual aspects of encaustic, infusing this ancient medium with new vitality. Their paintings incorporate the seductive surfaces, luminous colors and layered images that uniquely result from mixing pigment in translucent wax. The sensual physicality of these works is further enhanced by a range of techniques that includes scraping, burning, burnishing, stamping, incising, dipping, and pouring, and by elements adopted from other processes like printmaking, drawing, collage and installation.

“By exploiting the physicality of their medium, they force the viewer to look deeper – past the transparent surface, past the represented image – in order to reinforce a material awareness of self and of place,” said catalogue essayist Virginia Spivey.

Artists represented in the exhibition are Gower, Kristy Deetz (DePere, Wis.), Peter Dykhuis (Bedford, Nova Scotia), Lorraine Glessner (Rockledge, Penn.), Cheryl Goldsleger (Athens, Ga.), Heather Harvey (Big Stone Gap, Va.), Jeffrey S. Hirst (Minneapolis) and Timothy McDowell (West Mystic, Conn.).

“All of these artists use encaustic very differently,” Gower says. “I was trying to show with this exhibition the different ways that encaustic can be used, but it’s really only the tip of the iceberg.”

In addition to her works included already in the exhibition, Harvey, who received an MFA from VCU, completed a site-specific installation on the second floor of the Anderson Gallery for the exhibition.

The installation, which is called “Blue Ghost,” explores a number of the themes and metaphors that occupy Harvey in her work, she explains during a break in the installation. Bright yellow balls of plaster and wax greet visitors as they rise up the stairs. Viewers likely will focus on the yellow balls as they enter the room before discovering an assortment of blue balls in a corner behind them.

It is the blue pieces – the blue ghost – that form the anchor of the piece, Harvey says, not the more conspicuous yellow ones.

“I’m very interested in the power of quiet, hidden things, the things that nobody’s noticing,” she says. “The hidden infrastructure of our lives. Memories and ghosts – not ghosts in the supernatural way but in the way that things stay with us, even after they are dead and gone.”

The encaustic artists will participate in a panel discussion on Oct. 22 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. in the VCU Student Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Avenue, and will hold encaustic workshops on Oct. 23 from 9 a.m. to noon in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building, 1000 W. Broad St. Both events are free and open to the public.

Barcelona-based artist Joan Fontcuberta is best known for his explorations of the interstices between art, science and photographic illusion. To create the 40 large-scale prints in this exhibition, Fontcuberta used computer software originally designed to render landscape models from topographic data for military and scientific purposes.

Instead, Fontcuberta adopted as source material fragments of pictures by Caspar David Friedrich, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cezanne, Salvador Dali and other famous artists, requiring the program to transform their landscape images into three-dimensional virtual renditions of mountains, rivers, valleys and clouds. Through this process, Fontcuberta departs from an already imaginary image to create a final landscape that is purely fictional. The result, he says, is a mute space or a “landscape without memory.”

Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publications. The exhibition has also appeared at the Aperture Gallery in New York, the University of North Texas in Denton, the University Art Museum at the the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver, B.C.

The Anderson Gallery is located at 907 1/2 W. Franklin St. on the VCU campus. Operating hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public.