February 24 through March 18, with a reception on March 2, from
6 to 8 PM at the Chelsea Gallery.
Generally, when we hear the term "expressionism" we
tend to associate it with strident color, frenzied brushstrokes,
and formal distortion. However, the Mexican artist Seco, who was
drawn to California both by his love of classical music and its
tradition of West Coast figure painting, exemplified by artists
like Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, is a unique species of
expressionist. For his colors, while strong, are subtly harmonized;
his brush strokes, while vigorous, are anything but strident;
and his forms, while emphatic, are grounded in classical anatomy.
Thus, one encounters a new kind of formal and emotional expressiveness
in Seco's exhibition of acrylics on canvas at Agora Gallery, 530
West 25th Street, in Chelsea, where Seco's exhibition can be seen
from February 24 through March 18, with a reception on March 2,
from 6 to 8 PM.
As a guest of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and
the New West Symphony, Seco had an opportunity to observe these
orchestras during closed door rehearsals and capture the immediacy
of music-making as few other painters have. The intimacy of the
compositions that came out of this experience can only be compared
to Dega's pictures of ballet dancers in rehearsal, as well as
Romare Bearden's many collages of the jazz world; Seco's grasp
of his subject is just that quintessential.
Indeed, in the latter regard, his painting, "Trumpet II"
depicting a young horn player seated in a chair, his forelock
falling in his face, the bell of his instrument pointed at the
floor as he concentrates on getting a note just so, reminds one
of the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. That it actually depicts a symphonic
musician, however, gives a refreshingly unbuttoned, spontaneously
casual backstage view of the classical music scene than one is
not often afforded.
By contrast, the sweeping horizontal composition of "Requiem
III" presents us with the majesty of an entire orchestra
in performance: the conductor waving his baton at the podium;
the violinists sawing away with their bows in a row like a finely
tuned machine in the middle distance; the shapely, almost feminine
forms of a row of bass fiddles dominating the foreground, their
richly polished red wood surfaces gleaming; the white formal shirtings
of the musicians toward the rear appearing to rise on the tides
of the music like a flock of white birds taking flight. Here,
Seco invests the scene with a rhythmic grandeur which approximates
in visual terms the grandeur of the music itself, his composition
soaring rhythmically to the occasion in a manner that sweeps the
viewer away.
Equally strong in another manner is "Passing he Page"
another large canvas, albeit a vertical one, of a conductor captured
in the act of turning a page of music resting on the podium while
wielding his baton. What Seco has immortalized here is the dynamism
of a simple, yet essential, gesture in musical creation, heightening
the drama by setting the figure in his dark suit against a brilliant
red background and dispensing with the more detailed treatment
that we see in some of his other paintings to further heighten
the effect.
In other paintings of musicians in this exhibition, as well as
in a somewhat anomalous yet lovely vision of a crouching nude,
Seco whose ability to tell a story with paint may have
to do with the fact that he is also a published authorproves
himself to be an artist possessed of singular gifts.
February 24 through March 18, with a reception on March
2, from 6 to 8 PM at the Chelsea Gallery
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