May 30 will see two very talented names, in the form of Mike Davis and Heidi Taillefer open exhibitions at Joshua Liner Gallery. Both defining names with very different backrounds and styles of work will be separated by only a wall as they come together with Stories From the Other Side of the Bridge and An Uncanny Lineup of Serendipitous Connections respectively.
Stories From the Other Side of the Bridge is the suite of eighteen oil-on-canvas paintings takes clear stylistic cues from the Early Netherlandish and Flemish Masters—Bosch, Bruegel, Van Eyck, etc. Each work carries motifs, characters, and settings from one canvas to the next. Across large landscapes and intimate interior details, this shared content creates a community of images, though depicting a community like no other.
Walking fish and die-playing scorpions, gregarious snakes and giant butterflies, and human figures with bird heads inhabit this curious universe, made seductive by Davis’ lush oils and Renaissance palette of reds, ochers, and blues. The paintings depict a world of myth, fantasy, and colliding timeframes, a land “on the other side of the bridge,” but one that resonates with our own—not as memory but as dream.
In The Eighth Road, a boatload of peasant men sleepily contend with an assortment of symbolic challenges – a floating corpse, an enormous egg hatching a human hand, bird claw, and snake. Forward, Not Straight features a skeleton with a birdhouse for a head, paused on a dirt road against a beautifully scumbled sky and scenic, “low country” horizon. In The Other Side of the Bridge, another egg hatches a leg and a cannon amid an oenophilic scene of wine casks, grape-bearing birdmen, ladybugs, and a burning zeppelin in the distance.
In Davis’ imaginative world, the interaction of signs and symbols is a means of communication between species. Ravens bearing letters and pen-wielding ladybugs are not what they seem but what they symbolize, available to the unconscious interpretations of each viewer. But the presence of die, cards, and other games of chance suggests a universe where meaning is provisional, arranged and rearranged depending on the players and fate (with skeletons waiting patiently nearby).
Reflecting on life as a mixture of discovery, inevitability, and coincidence, Taillefer’s suite of twelve oil-on-canvas works presents a literalized depiction of destiny. Her dreamy paintings describe chimerical beings: humans with animal and mechanical parts, or animals with multiple limbs, wings, and utterly fantastical provenance. In each, Taillefer puts forth a coded, highly personalized origin myth—an “uncanny lineup of serendipitous connections” that for the artist shapes identity and purpose through transformation.
Birth of Venus is an updated riff on Botticelli’s iconic work. Here, “Venus” is a common tabby, newly sprung from a broken shell and bearing mechanical wings. Amid intergalactic dust and a spiral of cosmic fireflies, this relaxed kitty is more concerned with cleaning itself. Taillefer suggests that instinct and attitude are just as important to development as our genetic birthright. The Most Proximate Cause also comments on the elements that compose and constitute “destiny.” Taillefer offers a modern-day Damocles, cowering under a canopy of choices. Hanging above this anonymous nude, male subject is a crushing load of gears, blades, cogs, and other mechanical parts, an analogue to the pressures and excesses of modern life. The Angels of our Nature is a visual summary of Taillefer’s personal creation myth. Bringing together the realms of sea and land, air and matter, animal and human, the painting depicts life transformations that occur in body and spirit, with the central image of the individual as warrior.
