Round for a reason

In a White room, with colored circles, at the gallery

By Jenna Russell

“Tondo Rondo” shows at the C.W. White Gallery, in Portland, through Dec. 22. Call (207) 871-7282.

In gallery-speak, a “fun” show tends to mean a crowd-pleaser, something with more mass appeal than “serious” artistry. “Tondo Rondo,” the holiday show at the C.W. White Gallery, has the distinction of being fun, as in a good time, while addressing some of our most basic assumptions about art. The show, up through December 22, earns bonus points for being democratic. It includes works by unknown artists as well as painters currently featured in Art in America magazine; prices start at $125 (and run to $8000).

Circular paintings have a long history — Botticelli and Michelangelo both created tondi, or round paintings — but they’re far outnumbered by squares and rectangles, in part because it’s easier to stretch canvas over a four-sided frame. We tend to expect paintings, like refrigerators and shoeboxes, to be contained by right angles, and we’re set off-balance by “Tondo Rondo,” where all the pieces are round. By changing the shape of the paintings, the artists inform us that they’re up to something different. The circles seem to announce in bold, capital letters, “POSTMODERN” or “NEW NEW,” the latter a label affixed in the 1990s to a group of painters working in non-traditional formats, including Jerald Webster.

Webster is the unmistakable star of the White Gallery show. Eight of his large acrylic paintings, all done this year, are hung in one half of the gallery space. The largest, “Ghost of the Sea,” is an oval that stretches five-and-a-half feet from end to end. Webster lives and paints in upstate New York, and favored angular shapes, like diamonds, in the 1980s. To anyone who has ever watched a sales clerk ring up a pile of oils or acrylics, the amount of paint Webster uses will be much more shocking than the shapes of his canvases. “Ghost” piles light blue on dark silver on midnight blue on thick red, in amounts so copious they might have been poured from a can or slapped on with an oar. The technique exudes confidence: No one would throw so much paint around, we can’t help thinking, unless he was sure he was doing something important.

Webster’s pictures are abstract, their overlapping swaths of horizontal and vertical color vaguely like the lines of Chinese or Japanese letters. Their moods, driven by palette, are various and specific. “First Strike” has gelatinous mountains of sleek candy pink and touches of incandescent lavender and orange, all of it anchored by black and white. The feeling is fantastic in the literal sense: It’s mid-air flight by materials never meant to be airborne. Webster reminds us of the mystery of paint, that it lies somewhere between liquid and solid, and he lets us revel in the pleasure of consistencies, like those of mousse, oil, and wax, that we rarely get to touch. The paintings have so many stimulating characteristics, it’s hard to stay focused on their shape.

“Nocturnal” is a circle, its flawless symmetry at odds with the seemingly random arrangement of the paint. The colors approximate a sunset, with pink light pitched high in the upper quadrant, and dark gray, royal blue, and glossy purple around it. The effect is monumental, but more Times Square than Yosemite. Webster’s works proudly proclaim themselves the products of human endeavor, making no attempt to imitate nature. That said, their circular shape coyly references countless natural forms, from the seed to the earth itself. A friend of mine observed that the circle is the shape assumed by the heavens, and by certain church ceilings, when looked at from below, giving Webster another link to Michelangelo.

Timothy Folland is a young, self-taught Portland artist whose small, round oils are flurries of gestural brushstrokes in earthy colors. Blue at the top and brown and green below, the marks harbor living energy without assuming any one specific form. The scale is human and the warmth real in “Uphill and Against the Wind,” which might be a pink haystack, but stops short of becoming a landscape for sure. The uncertainty keeps the energy from settling, as in Jules Olitski’s stormy, exuberant “Described by Love,” with its watercolor cloudburst of black, gold, and sparkling gray.

Gallery owner Chris White uses the idiosyncrasies of his space to prevent less developed talents from being crushed by heavy hitters like Webster. He makes room for Pamela Wilson’s paintings of fish heads, each about the size of a pickle jar lid, which cultivate strangeness by isolating the face from the familiar shape of the body. White says he wants to create a warm, salon-style atmosphere, where even children are welcome, not a “temple of art” defined by barriers. The range within the current show helps achieve that objective.

If you walk by the gallery at twilight, you’ll notice how Webster’s paintings seem to glow inside like happy planets. Stop in and warm yourself a minute in front of “The Sun,” a round, orange painting by Josef Drapell that’s bright and shiny as a brand-new car. Heavy orange frosting gums one edge, but in the middle, the paint is sleek and pale, and grooved with delicate curved lines to resemble a fresh-cut slice of redwood It’s fun, it’s beautiful, and rest assured, it’s art.

Jenna Russell can be reached at russelljenna@hotmail.com