By the unrules Duane Paluska at June Fitzpatrick BY MAGGIE KNOWLES
	duane paluska His new sculptures and paintings show at June Fitzpatrick’s MECA Gallery, through June 26.

Imagine arriving at a cocktail party; you’re the first one there. You order a martini and walk around the room, noticing art on the walls and the lack of dust on the un-played piano. Someone else arrives. You walk over to meet them. As they extend their hand in greeting, you place your glass on the cocktail table. Smash! The triangular glass has fallen through to the floor. The olives stare up at you with their red eyes in shame. You hurriedly try to sit on the closest chair so you can gather up the shards. Huh? There is no place for your bum . . . what is going on here? Apparently there can be no other host for this party save for Duane Paluska, whose unruly furniture and paintings grace June Fitzpatrick’s MECA space through June.

The lovely thing about furniture (wicker notwithstanding) is that it is dependable. You can safely assume that your couch, bed, and favorite chair will be there, in full form, when you need it, to encase you in familiar fabric, to rock you home.

The lovely thing about Paluska’s furniture is that is does none of that. It mocks your expectation. It gleefully runs away if your bum nears it. It winks at your confusion while all the time confusing you more with its seeming functionality.

When you and I read, we don’t reduce each word into letters, only to then recreate the word into an idea. Our minds see the outline of the word and recognize it; we read by linking shapes, basically. This exhibit plays on that phenomenon. We see the shape of a chair, the shape of a table. Because our minds tell us it is a chair, we believe it to be thus. It isn’t until a closer inspection that our mind slows down to see only parts of a chair, parts that were never made to support a lazy slouch.

"Hamlett" and "Captain Carpenter" speak to the notion that chairs and other comforting pieces are so accommodating to our forms and needs that they have become an extension of us, the existential, "Who am I without my bed?" Each of the aforementioned pieces include panes of glass as a chair’s back. We see our reflection, our hyper-extended knees and slumped shoulders depressed that there is no rest for the weary upon this otherwise stunning mahogany perch.

The thing of it is, Paluska is a revered furniture maker (furniture that includes all parts), and collectors wait with bated breath to own one of his custom-designed gems. His sculptures do not have an ounce less of the master craftsmanship that go into his livelihood.

But he allows his more wry side, the side that whizzes about on his BMW bike, to show in the sculpture. Several of the works resemble creatures that are caught behaving badly. "Antic" is a galloping llama (made from chair legs) that comes to a hasty stop after realizing he is about to fly over a cliff. "Together" is a piggy whose ears perk at full attention to hear every word you might whisper about his patch of old leather.

Each piece is alive. You turn your back, they move — you turn again and their posture has changed. They stop a second before you catch them in action. It’s obvious that, at night, these energetic critters climb, dance, sing, and party in the room.

While the sculptures are the definite draw to the exhibit, Paluska also shows his Flag series of paintings. Though the relationship between the sculpture and paintings is clear, similar angular lines and geometric shapes, the mind stays within the context of the canvas while it plays among the animated chairs. The color choices, in varying degrees of boldness, are specifically placed to prevent any fixed back or foreground. The viewer must decide which color and shape hold the primary moment. Go back a few moments later, and your choice will have changed — these works are a lesson in the cycle of redefining importance.

The aura of the Fitzpatrick space is that of a genius’s living room. The paintings and sculpture work in tandem to tickle and tease the senses without overpowering them. These works are stoic in presence without cockiness. They are confident in their silliness and reserved in their boldness. They are a light lesson in expectation and how our minds deal with the uncomfortable notion that our first impression is wrong; and yet even so we don’t need to "fix" anything. They bend our minds around the ordinary into the realm of dysfunction. And even though dysfunction isn’t desirable in the family, it is all too welcome in the home.

Maggie Knowles can be reached at margaretknowles@hotmail.com