Review

"Impediments," Oil on Canvas.

Robert Anders

7 a.m.-7 p.m.

Dunn Bros. Coffee
8975 Metcalf
Overland Park, KS
913.381.3030

Hours: 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, 7 a.m.-7 p.m Sunday
Runs through: Aug. 31.

Artist's site: http://www.robertanders.com
Gallery site: http://www.dunnbros.com/locate_results.asp?location_id=69

Rocks tell stories to those who know how to read them.

There are travel narratives: I was carried here by a glacier and dumped.

There are stories of inner change: I was fired up and ready to burn the world when I moved out of that volcano, but I've cooled down since then.

And there are breakup stories of stress and fracture and irreparable separation ... and these, by and large, are the stories that make up Robert Anders' current show at Dunn Bros. Coffee in Overland Park.

Anders has large oils in the main room and small print studies in the back hallway (he's also a sculptor but has gone exclusively 2-D with this exhibition).

In both cases, he favors stark, unadorned images of broken or stratified rock: canyon walls, fractured basalt, layers upon sedimentary layers. The heat is almost palpable (as anyone who has been around a canyon wall that has soaked up sunshine for a day could attest), but it's a physical rather than emotional warmth.

It's reminiscent of Andy Goldsworthy's environmental work at times, but with a significant difference: No human hand broke and arranged the material.

Other works also run along Goldsworthyesque visual lines — and inject a dose of mystery into Anders' show, even for those who know their geology.

Impediments (pictured above) is one such work. The leaf and twigs seem both naturally and artfully arranged, as though someone had woven a decorative screen to obscure the rocks behind it.

The painting, Anders writes, is an exploration of irresistable questions.What stops me? What's below this? Where did this all come from? Was it placed here? Was it an accident? Could it be a trap? Now what?

The answers to those questions are unknowable, save for the person (if there is one) who created the arrangement. Some mysteries are more fun unsolved, though ... and the stories told in Anders' show are best seen up close, rather than on a computer screen.

As ever, that's a hint ...

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