Artist Photo.
“Nona’s Pasta,” oil on linen.
Pasta primavera. Turkey sausage. Oven-roasted potatoes. Crème brûlée. Prosecco .
Menu items for a sumptuous, hearty meal? Certainly. At Kehler Liddell Gallery on Whalley Avenue, they also happen to be courses in a visual feast that Artist and long-time Westvillian Frank Bruckmann is serving up in his newest show, aptly titled Breaking Bread. The exhibition — 18 of his very painterly oils — is paired with a set of Marjorie Gillette Wolfe ‘s panoramic photographs, titled The Whole Wide World. The double-bill runs through April 26.
Bruckmann always shows works that articulate a single theme. In the recent past these have been nudes and New Haven store-keepers’ occupations. Two years ago, he knew that he wanted to do a series on what he calls “the narrative of dining.”
He would have called each of the works “painting one” and “painting two,” he said, had not his wife, who accompanied him to many of the meals in question, showed up at the gallery on the very day of the paintings’ installation. As she looked at each of the compositions, many with very recognizable neighbors’ faces, she was able to remember each evening’s food and drink offerings.
In a Bruckmannian pictorial feast, the vittles are far less detailed; they serve as the vehicle for him to explore qualities of paint and the relations of figures around a common centerpiece, like a table. The artist works from photographs, some taken by fellow diners at the meal. Then he makes sketches of the photographs, and then blows them up projects on a monitor. He also feels free to move people around, change the shape of furniture or items on the table.
Removing Your Wife
Bruckmann is not after any version of Photorealism or a realistic record of a meal, but a feeling, with its visual textures. Because of this, his changes can include eliminating figures of people who were at the meal.
In “Creme Brulee” that alteration included his wife. “I finally took my wife out of it. It opened up the composition,” Bruckmann said as he received viewers and admirers on a recent weekend.
Detail from “Creme Brulee.”
One of those visitors was Graphic Artist Allan Greenier, who got a double pleasure from visiting the show: He recognized friends from the neighborhood whom Bruckmann had depicted, including artist Susan McCaslin and gallery owner Gabe DaSilva.
“I am so impressed. They [the paintings] look like they take a long time. I sense the love and craft, and the energy. It looks like every square inch was thought about and cared about,” Greenier said. He added that the craftsmanship is going to inspire him in his own painting, which he is about to begin.
Gallery Photo.
“Polar Circle,” archival pigment photo.
Bruckmann said that his partner in the show, Marjorie Gillette Wolfe, who was out of town at the time of the interview, makes a good, if contrasting, match for his work.
He pronounced her photographs, panoramas full of air and light and contained within borderless frames, about as far from his paintings as one can get.
And yet there’s a striking similarity.
Detail from “Skim.”
In some of her time-lapse-like photographs like “Skim” (pictured), Wolfe shows the same figure in chronological sequence, as in English photographer Edward Muybridge’s pioneering work or, to use her own comparison, the triptychs of medieval altar pieces that display before and afters of well known narratives.
While the meals vary and the guests come and go in the 18 paintings, Bruckmann’s feast could also be viewed as moments of one long, well sequenced eating event. In fact this strength is also a kind of weakness: the compositions risk being a little repetitive.
Still, Bruckmann’s painterly suppers are a far cry those abstemious Last Suppers of the recent Easter and Passover season. They’re a welcome eyeful, and there isn’t a slice of matza discernible in any of them.