Authentically Patricia Bellan-Gillen
- Patrick Theimer
- Nov 6
- 3 min read
Existence precedes essence. Or so says Jean-Paul Sartre. But I do think that explains why I like art so much... it consistently reminds me that we simply are before we become. And I think Patricia Bellan-Gillen gets that.
Her recent show at Zynka Gallery, familiar rabbits and persistent beasts, was extraordinary. It featured works that evoke fantastical fairy tales, weave folklore with nostalgia, and parody ornate vignettes, usually within thicketed labyrinths welcoming the fascination of discovery. Some of the works seemed more intent to explore a sort of optical jiu-jitsu to arouse a repressed chimera. And most suspended almost impossibly as quarried slabs of chiseled granite, though smaller works on paper also lined like sentinels and provided a bit more insight to a more delicate process. There were prints and collage and brushstrokes of acrylic demonstrating Patricia’s incredible range of practice… but mostly drawing. In fact, drawing was the primary painting. And I think that’s what made it all so authentic: its permanently editable state of being, a constant potential. It felt very alive and present.
I was particularly held by Broken Knowledge/Losing Homer. Chaotic and ponderous, its imagery is a vortex of visual cues. The outline of a vessel sits above the surface like graffiti tagging repossession. But the field is broken and incomplete, imposing a sort of impaired diptych suddenly imbalanced by its missing pieces. I was oddly reminded of Anselm Kiefer’s Breaking of the Vessels, two very different works but each breaking free of an allegorical containment to convey the dichotomy of fear and hope, abundance and loss, destruction and renewal. There’s weight, and density and complexity. There’s a violent mutilation. And a silent reckoning. And even though there is a residual expanse that allows the picture to seemingly live beyond its frame, the focus is still on a core rooted in recognition.
With colored pencils and paint, I try to make sense of this insistent and entangled images and render a tale of an individual trying to understand this world…I would like my work to confront the viewer simultaneously with beauty and awkwardness and to mediate elegance with humor. ~Patricia Bellan-Gillen
Denise Green is another artist I think about when I see vessels. Identified with the late 70’s new imagists, she published a book in 2005 titled Metonymy in Contemporary Art: A New Paradigm. Green explains: “When artists create metonymically, there is a fusion between an inner state of mind and an outer material world.” A retrospective for Green followed in 2006 at the Museum Kurhaus (in the German hometown of Joseph Beuys, who Green greatly admired) which was reviewed by Robert Morgan at the Brooklyn Rail. He expanded on this: “Metonymy…assigns no specific meaning to signs, as opposed to symbolism, which sets up a direct one-to-one correspondence between a sign and its referent, as in medieval iconography. Rather, it allows meaning to spread “in all directions, absorbing and conjoining ever new aspects of reality (near and far, conscious and unconscious, present and past …)””...
...“Her paintings are not about reflecting the times. She is not painting mirrors. Instead, they are about being in the center of time, within time, and open to the possibility of significance.”
Like Green, Bellan-Gillen uses our recognition of familiar and even silly images and icons to invite a virtuous response to corrupted conditions. From repetition emerges meaning, and a practiced eye will find more possibility than pattern. The interpretation of what we see will likely change based on the day or week or year we see it. And in that moment, we either exist within the vessel where history and treasure and the patience of age slows down the space... or outside of it, where those possibilities are free to explore, rediscover and even re-shape the space expanded. Within we are. Outside we become. Either way, recognition permits participation, and ownership. The picture becomes our own.
If that's all a bit complicated and perhaps too metonymically much, you can simply enjoy just how beautiful these paintings are. Regardless what kind of art you prefer, you will find Bellan-Gillen's works to be masterly, and the artist to be in her prime.
Learn more about Patricia Bellan-Gillen by visiting Zynka Gallery or her website!
