Michael Knapstein
After the Storm
"After the Storm" by Michael Knapstein.
Some of Madison’s most visible — and visibly interesting — art often goes unnoticed as people rush past it on their way to a show at the Overture Center. But this fall, there’s plenty of reason to slow down when passing through Galleries I, II and III, which line the three corridors entering the Capitol Theater on the first, second and third floors. Each gallery offers its own themed exhibit and together feature the work of dozens of artists, mostly from Wisconsin. Beth Racette, the center’s programming and community engagement manager, says the committee that develops the exhibits received between 60 and 90 submissions from artists.
The most visited gallery, according to Racette, is Gallery I, located on the State Street level just off the lobby rotunda. It is currently displaying the 10th Biennial PhotoMidwest Juried Exhibition. Photographers from seven Midwestern states, members of the Madison-based nonprofit association, provide an array of black-and-white and color photos and digital prints. Content and approaches are as varied as the photographers who create them.
“After the Storm,” a 30-inches by 30-inches black-and-white archival pigment print by Middleton photographer Michael Knapstein, presents a simple farmhouse dwarfed by a wall of magnificently threatening cumulus thunderheads. At the other end of the spectrum, Belgium (Wis.)-based photographer Guntis Lauzums offers “Kandinsky’s Lines,” a digital photo that acts as an homage of sorts to the geometric abstracts of Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. Both are stunning, each in a different way.
Upstairs, Gallery II launches the season, which ends Dec. 2, with Studies in Stone, Ice and Memory featuring the works of Peter Blanchard, Terri Messinides and Steven Ralser.
Blanchard’s images of the different rock strata, born from his experiences trying to photograph bighorn sheep, represent memory quite literally captured in geologic time. Ralser’s image of lake ice and fishing holes highlights nature’s complex abstract patterns, capturing the water’s history in largely monochromatic images.
Messinides’ mixed-media montages illustrate the most deliberate and perhaps compelling examples of memory. Her works, constructed from old photos, ephemera, natural materials and handmade paper, offer a strong emotional commentary on the theme.
“Memories can be fragile or fleeting, difficult to retrieve or difficult to forget,” Messinides writes in her installation’s notes. “In essence, there are no perfect memories, but without our memories we would be lost.”
Visitors climbing one more flight of stairs to Gallery III will be rewarded with some of the exhibition’s strongest, most arresting imagery.
Two Selves: Explorations of Personal Experience offers interpretations of the human condition by pen-and-ink artist Jacob Newman and oil-and-canvas painter Ryan J. Robinson. Newman offers humorous collages, while Robinson’s portraiture is the stuff of nightmares by an artist seemingly weaned on the work of Francis Bacon.
“I intend to create an extremely personal experience through blended pop art,” Newman writes of his images. “I draw heavily on the fantastic nature of the Jewish storytelling tradition that I was raised on, with its freewheeling style and use of hyperbole.”
Robinson takes a different approach: “My work is my way of coming to terms with the lack of reasons for our existence, and the path to embracing that realization,” he writes. “I hope that my work does the same for its viewers.”
An additional Overture Gallery located outside The Playhouse on the Henry Street level operates on its own schedule. Starting on Nov. 3, that gallery will feature In Good Company: Works from the Veteran Print Project. See our story here.