Ithaca College

   

Jeremy Long,  Painters Painting                                        
Linda Warren Gallery
1052 W. Fulton Market St.

In this three-artist exhibit entitled Painters Painting, legendary artists Don Southard and Stanley Lewis are showing their  latest work alongside the much younger and less accomplished Jeremy Long, an assistant professor at Ithaca College in New York.  Southard and Lewis are arguably two of the more notable American artists living today, both whom have taught at such acclaimed institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago and American University, all the while earning Guggenheim Fellowships for good measure.  And while the talent of Southard and Lewis is evident in Painters Painting, it is the vision and execution of Long's pieces that steal the show.

In this exhibit Long takes his latest creations, two massive oil on canvas pieces entitled "The Delivery" and "Ithaca Home", and creates two even more dramatic overall productions surrounding both by including five to seven much smaller derivative paintings of the enormous originals and displaying them tastefully adjacent to the two.  The smaller derivative studies are cubist and abstract interpretations of the massive originals, which are modern realist figurative in genre.  The overall effect of the smaller studies flanking the originals is both visually stunning and intellectually stimulating.  The subject matter of the originals are the artist himself with his wife and child,  in settings that span centuries of everyday occurrences, like cooking at the fireplace and reading a book in a chair.  The overall impact of these mundane activities locked in a different time interposed with the eerie presence of the artist is a remarkably challenging visual study in itself.  However, the inclusion of the smaller study pieces alongside the massive originals take the overall production to an entirely higher level of accomplishment.  The slight deviations from the studies to the original along with the different treatment of perspective, scale, and color clearly confront the enigma of perspective in the quest of formulating meaning from reality.

The impact of Long's work in this exhibit,  particularly being displayed next to and outshining the work of such giants as Southard and Lewis, reveal that Jeremy Long may well be on his way to the pinnacle of the American Art establishment , possibly without peer.

(Jonathan Taylor)  Posted September 19, 2009