Opposites Attract at Kehler Liddell

The background colors seem too vivid, and the shapes in the foreground too stark, to be real. But they are. It’s a photograph from Utah. It’s photographer Alan Shulik’s heightened sense of reality that makes it pop. But as the title of the image — ​“Quiescence” — suggests, Shulik isn’t drawing out the details to excite it. He wants us to drink, long and slow, from his images, and maybe feel our heart rates drop a little in the meantime.

Never mind that on the opposite wall, there’s a party going on.

Amanda Walker’s ​“Drawings w/ a Chance of Narrative” and Alan Shulik’s ​“Quiescence” — running now through June 30 at Kehler Liddell Gallery on Whalley Avenue in Westville — work together as an exhibit, at first glance, by being near-complete opposites of one other. Shulik’s images are tranquil; Walker’s are noisy. Shulik’s pieces are still landscapes, devoid of people; Walker’s drawings are full of characters and alive with movement. But certain formal elements, such as a sense of vivid color and a love of detail, also bring Walker and Shulik together as artists.

Taken together, Walker’s and Shulik’s pieces help a viewer understand both a little better, first by appreciating how similar formal elements can be put to such disparate emotional use. But with a little more looking, there’s a way in which Shulik’s pieces might help a viewer see the overall composition behind Walker’s riotous pieces, while Walker’s pieces help a viewer dive into the detail of Shulik’s images and feel the pulse beneath the serenity.

On Shulik’s side of the gallery, his images of the West might catch the eye first, particularly Mesa Arch Sunrise, which splits a ray of the sun so perfectly that, like Quiescence above, it doesn’t seem possible.

But a stroll around the gallery shows that Shulik manages to capture seemingly impossible images pretty often, even when he’s not in a more obviously striking Western landscape. There’s a house reflected almost perfectly in a puddle in front of it. Ocean waves beneath clouds at Hammonasset Beach are rendered in such sharp detail that it’s as if Shulik flash-froze the waves to catch the wrinkles in the water. Rocks offshore tower like monuments. A tree at the end of a path takes on some serious ominousness. And a thing as simple as a tree in fog seems to emanate light even as it’s shrouded in mystery.

The images don’t need to be labels as such to convey a sense of stillness, whether it’s consoling or (in a few cases) a little unsettling. And it’s in the unsettling department that Shulik’s images find another connection with Amanda Walker’s very different works on the opposite wall.

Walker reveals in her bio that her artwork is often inspired by her work as a theater costume designer. ​“I see a distinct and exaggerated shift from one persona into another persona as actors take on a role,” she writes. ​“Sometimes the transformation will occur over mere seconds when an actor, who arrives in street clothes to a costume fitting, will become a medieval king by adding a cape and crown. In this example, the storytelling nature of theatre transforms the actor into an archetype. These moments are the origins of much of my work.”

Walker’s theatrical bent is on full display in her artwork at Kehler Liddell, not only in her eye for color and detail, but in her attention to movement. The overall effect is both comical and pleasantly creepy, partaking as much from Hieronymus Bosch as from a circus poster. Once the general image is taken in, there are a hundred details to catch and sort out, and one is never quite sure what one is going to find. Is that pig with a crown making off just with someone’s glove, or is the hand still inside it? Is that man wearing a rooster mask, or does he actually have a rooster’s head? Why are one of the characters’ eyes crossed out? And what kind of race are they all in? With the kind of madness on display in the pictures, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the finish line is the edge of a cliff — maybe like the rocky shore in some of Shulik’s images — and that they all jump off it, laughing.

Amanda Walker’s ​“Drawings w/ a Chance of Narrative” and Alan Shulik’s ​“Quiescence” run through June 30 at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.