Review

Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas.

Anne Vieux

8 a.m.-8 p.m.

JavaNaut Cafe
1615 W 39th St
Kansas City, MO
816.716.3657

Hours: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m-8 p.m. Sunday
Runs through: July 13

Artist's site: http://www.annevieux.com

Looking at Anne Vieux's new work is a bit like trying to watch television on three channels playing simultaneously ... with paint smeared and streaked all over the screen. There are recognizable images, but they're obscured and skewed.

In The Cord, something much like a fßa♣wþn curls its ¬h◊e‡a≡d onto its f•o¿rÐe≠l§eθg∂s in slumber. If you look closely at the untitled work above, you'll see that peering from the upper right corner, there's a ±m≈a‰n wearing a ...

Hard to sort through the extra bits, isn't it? That's one of Vieux's main points, which she underscores by displaying one painting on a curved canvas reminiscent of a television screen.

In a digital culture information is increasingly blurred, distorted, and filtered, she writes. These distortions, through the screen or the lens, leave an ambiguous phantom of the organic world. This exhibition explores the affects of technological interferences on organic forms through painting. These works were created in the last six months on paper and canvas, as an attempt to understand my relationship to technology and the body.

Vieux's acrylics work not despite their information overloads, shortfalls and alterations, but because of them. The not-quite-hidden, half-concealed and skillfully suggested images invite long and repeated viewing, to make sure nothing is missed. The use of thick bright colors, swirling and looping over and through open dark spaces, provides several appealing contrasts: warm and cold, empty and full, lively and still.

Vieux expands on that theme in another statement:

There are inherent contradictions within each work such as the sensuousness of the body and the hardness of machine aesthetics, she writes, adding that her work strives to create relational moments within individual pieces as well as in the body of work. This allows each piece to function as a singular moment in a nonlinear history and an overarching theme of a particular non-linguistic experience, and exploration of the body’s potential in space and time. These oppositional forces are important, as we must be reminded through all of our triumphs, we are organic beings, and our matter will break down.

Her choice of words hearkens back to ancient Rome, where a general riding in triumph (a specific and closely regulated civic and religious spectacle) would be accompanied by a slave repeatedly reminding him: Memento mori ... "Remember that you will die."

The constant refrain was designed to keep said general from getting swell-headed ... but it's good to be reminded that this earthly existence has an expiration date. Vieux has taken the grim reality of Memento mori and turned it into an eye-grabbing, thought-provoking -- and yes, just fun -- body of work.

Or, perhaps, works of the body. Maybe both. With all those channels playing at once, anything is possible.

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