PUBLISHED ARTICLE 1996 MMFA

"GARY CHAPMAN:
The Four Horsemen & Selected Works"

The Montgomery Museum of Fine Art

In the latter half of the twentieth century, art has struggled
to find its voice within the media-saturated chaos of modern life.
Today's visual vocabulary is a rich one, incorporating
generations of stylistic innovation-from tromp l'eoil realism
to abstraction to the aesthetic of modern design-with the result
that eclecticism of style is a given, relegated to the back seat,
while content has become the driving force of art.

Gary Chapman joins many of his contemporaries in seeking to
reconcile painting's various historical sources, both artistic
and intellectual. His creative choices reflect his interest
in baroque painting of the Counter-Reformation or medieval art
associated with the Christian tradition, and his illusionistic
presentations of objects and figures in an amorphous environment
carry the potent association of religious art's apocolyptic visions.
Like this art of the past, Chapman's intent is clearly didactic-
to warn, to instruct, and to reveal the age-old message that personal
redemption is a rigorous and analytical process-a battle that must
be fought within.

Chapman identifies two distinct branches of work within the larger
body of art that he has produced in the last several years. The
first is more "real"-meaning that these images are informed by
intellectual and rational process in their development. Paintings like
Mutter und Tochter (1993) with its polished presentation of figures
are immediately recognizable as contemporary, but the dramatic
lighting effects of chiaroscuro and allusions to altarpieces in the
two part (predella and main panel) format tie this work directly to
Christian imagery both in iconography and style. In the painted panel
construction Spike Posing as Siddhartha (1993), the artist's interest
in the sources of human spirituality extends to Eastern religions and
symbolic objects. The construction itself is composed of triangularly
-shaped canvases. enclosing other triangular forms. The pyramid
shape is an ancient reference to spiritual power, which focuses in
its apex. Other literal symbols-the owl as a reference to wisdom,
the rock to strength, the dog to faithfulness-surround the figure of
an adolescent boy representing Siddhartha. (Siddhartha is the given
name of the historical Buddha.) In his seated pose, Siddhartha's body
repeats the triangular form of the larger painted construction and,
appropriately, locates his power in the head and the mind.

Opposed, but related, to this literal compositional approach
is the more intuitive one seen in works, such as Thirteen Seeds
(1996), which are sequentially developed from images layered over
a painterly void and then upon one another. The individual elements
which Chapman employs in these paintings are highly charged with
universal meaning-skeletal body parts, tools, bare branches and
seeds predominate. These elements are overtly symbolic icons of
human frailty. Moreover, their relationships are distinctly formal.
Chapman imposes a specific visual discipline upon the compositions
that is intimidating, and slightly disturbing, in its rigor. If the
foreground elements engage our curiosity and invite analysis, the
backgrounds are almost sensual in their allure-the rich, glowing
field of brush strokes drawing us deeper into Chapman's illusion
of a soul in conflict.

Margaret Lynne Ausfeld
Curator of Paintings and Sculpture
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts

Published for:

the 1997 exhibition brochure
"GARY CHAPMAN: The Four Horseman & Selected Works"
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts

and

the 1996 Catalog of
Southern Arts Federation
National Endowment for the Arts
1996 Fellowships, Painting, Drawing
and Works on Paper