Review

"The Chair of the Orient," Mixed Media on Canvas.

Kale Van Leeuwen
Chairs

7 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.-midnight

Room 39
1719 W. 39th St.
Kansas City, MO
816.753.3939

Hours: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5:30-10 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and Saturday, 7 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5:30-midnight Thursday-Friday.
Runs through: May 1.

Artist's site: http://www.vankale.com
Gallery Site: http://www.rm39.com

Kale Van Leeuwen's fascination is not with people. It's not with the places people go or the things they use, play with or wear.

It's with the light that comes off those things, and with the shadows they cast.

One consistent thread in all of my work is the use of light and reflections, he writes. Whether the subject matter is a mannequin, chairs, marbles or a ceramic horse, the lighting is always a key part of the painting. I also have a great desire for color; the brighter the better. I like the vibrancy of the saturated color next to the deep black shades.

Chairs are the subjects — and therefore, Chairs is the title — of the hyperprolific Van Leeuwen's current show at Room 39 in the Volker Neighborhood.  And as The Chair of the Orient (pictured above) shows, Van Leeuwen is holding fast to his mixed-media technique as well as to his predilections for bright lights and deep darkness.

Currently, my work is a process that starts with a photo, edited heavily, then collaged onto canvas, he explains. I am not as concerned much about the flatness and exactness of the gluing process. I like to let the wrinkles and tears happen naturally. After the glue has dried I paint directly on the image. I like to leave some of the photograph untouched. After that I glaze the entire painting with a gloss varnish. The varnish gives the surface a unified appearance. As this process has many steps, I usually work about 10-15 paintings at a time.

In some cases, that productivity rate (and the fact that Van Leeuwen spends almost every night creating) could produce a sloppy, uneven body of work. But the paintings in Chairs are, as with Van Leeuwen's previous mixed-media pieces, uniformly slick, sleek and polished ... the sort of thing Edward Hopper might have produced had he used furniture instead of faces as his light-reflecting props.

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