Review

A review of Tyson Schroeder's The Bastard Image

TysonSchroeder, "Rage Study for a Portrait of Leon Nesrac," oil, 30" x 30". Image: courtesy of the artist

Moxie Gallery
Kansas City, Missouri
April 2 — 30

Art has always had the ability to set a stage for the viewer’s imagination. Whether it is the Surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy or the post-war Expressionist works of Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon, the landscape of the mind has long been a source of inspiration for the modern and contemporary artist. It is in this surreal-expressionist vein in which the paintings that form Tyson Schroeder’s exhibition The Bastard Image, on view now at the Moxie Gallery, lie.

The sense of a story line that Schroeder’s smaller watercolor and oil paintings convey appeals to a desire to construct a narrative around the scene they depict. Each scene, applied to the substrate in a lyrical, illustrative style that aids in inviting the eye into the painting, is replete with plot elements. In The Night Mirror a large pachyderm-esque creature sits with its back ground into a corner. Its pillar-like upper legs shield its cowering head from a shaft of light that streams in from a gap in an opposite wall.

TysonSchroeder, "Watching It All Fall Apart," watercolor and oil glaze, 17" x 17". Image: courtesy of the artist

Next to the frightened giant and under the gap in the wall two hominids stabilize the sides of a ladder as a third climbs up toward the palpable light. Their intentions are not known. Are these humanoids friends of the grey beast? Are they captors? What do they intend to do to the hole that is causing so much distress – close it off, leaving the creature in darkness? Widen it, revealing an outside world unknown to us at this time in the story? There is also some oversized dice that lie just beyond the foot of the creature, which may be a metaphor for chance in this picture or may simply be an object of amusement for a walled in animal. Any of these outcomes are plausible. Schroeder encourages his viewers to create narratives and believes that art should inspire thought, whether it is positive or negative, and should encourage discussion, creativity, or some sort of emotional response.

The remainder of Schroeder’s watercolor and oil paintings follow suit in creating visual narratives, many tinged with a whimsical darkness reminiscent of Roald Dahl or the Brothers Grimm. Works such as Sunday Landscape, in which a highly distorted figure warms himself by a white-purple fire while the dilapidated buildings in the background seem on the brink of tumbling over the treacherous cliff where they were built, exude an existentialist sentiment or a post-apocalyptic vision similar to books like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

TysonSchroeder, "RacingHummingbirds," watercolor, 11" x 17". Image: courtesy of the artist

Two small studies, The Oil Boiler and Racing Hummingbirds, act almost as character sketches that could be built into a plot. The Oil Boiler depicts an elephant whose trunk has been converted into a propeller and who pedals a tricycle. Racing Hummingbirds, a particularly energized painting, shows the stylized head of man, face turned toward the sky. From his gaping mouth, a flock of hummingbirds escapes, exploding into the sky as if set free after years of confinement.

TysonSchroeder, "44.62.65.88," oil, 36" x 36". Image: courtesy of the artist

Moving out of the narrative and into the visceral, Schroeder’s large canvas 44.62.65.88 bridges the gap between the dark but still lyrical watercolors and the expressive canvases that comprise the latter half of his exhibition. 44.62.65.88 acts as a window into some otherworldly dimension. Three figures are depicted in this canvas, two small, stout humanoids wrapped in dark fabric stand idly as a massive, swollen creature passes between them. The ability to form a plot still exists with a painting such as this, but the outcome is somehow darker, graver.

The figures seem trapped, locked in perpetual toil, like Sisyphus and his stone. Maybe it’s the look on the Giant’s face. It’s a look of agony and exhaustion. It is as if his huge bulk of a body has finally overtaken him and keeps him from moving any farther — and yet, he still walks. Maybe it’s the smaller figures that stand on either side as if this sight were a natural occurrence on the plane they inhabit. Whatever the reason, 44.62.65.88 is successful in achieving that uneasy feeling that lives in many of the classic Surrealist paintings.

TysonSchroeder, "Stasis: SelfPortrait," oil, 30" x 30". Image: courtesy of the artist

This unease carries through to another canvases, Stasis: Self Portrait, for example. Here Schroeder has eliminated all narrative elements. The background in Stasis a simple bisection of the canvas to denote a horizon line. Everything the artist wants the viewer to see is pushed to the foreground, confronting the viewer directly and giving the eye nowhere else to go. The head of the figure is devoid of any facial features save a wide, thick-lipped mouth slathered in deep red paint.

The hulking body is suspended from a spider web of cords that dangle the figure just above the yellowed floor. Even in a scene as seemingly grotesque as this, however, there lies a certain delicacy that emerges as the eye travels to the stalks that represent the figure’s legs. The angle of the legs is more suggestive of a dancer than a body hung from a ceiling, and the sense of calm on the monstrous face lends itself to the formation of a dually savage and somehow graceful scene.

The Bastard Image showcases the work of an artist who is looking for a response, be it visceral or cerebral. In an interview, Schroeder relays, “If a piece doesn’t inspire somebody to continue to think about it, positively or negatively, or inspire them to create something of their own either out of homage or hatred, or have discussions about the piece — or maybe not even about the piece itself, but about what it was saying or showing — then the piece is probably not very good and should be burned.”

The expression of the human condition has long intrigued artists, and in viewing Tyson Schroeder’s work, it is clear that it continues to be a prominent source of inspiration.

-re-

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