Mary Hrbacek

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Creon Gallery April 22 - May 2, 2009

Trees with Personality

by ddlombardi

Anthropomorphic trees. Some of you have seen them: a shadowy form of a tree darkened by day’s end,looming like a spirit inhabited by a human soul. Or maybe you have seen a face in oddly contoured bark that exhibits the characteristics of a human face. The intent of Mary Hrbacek is to take some of these personifications and paint them as evocative portraits to show all living things as equally important and integral. By using trees, a form that can be found in all ages and cultures, Hrbacek creates a basis for a universal essence that weaves through all life forms.

Throughout these works, which are medium-sized paintings of unique trees set against simple backgrounds, Hrbacek manages something of a sense of humor, reminding me of the work of René Magritte, who was also known for his ability to use familiar forms to convey expansive thoughts while offering a hint of satire and dread.

And that’s the message: if you believe that all living things have a spiritual presence, then chopping down a tree is a violent act. And we all know we need trees – they give us the very air we breathe. Hrbacek also takes great pride in locating trees in the U.S., Asia, and Europe.

But it’s more than that. There is wisdom in those trunks, those gnarly limbs, and the patchwork of bark. Hrbacek is also working through art history by referencing some pretty important artists who knew how to make portraiture pertinent and profound. “Gold Cornucopia” (right), an acrylic on linen painting, has the edgy linear quality of an Alice Neel, while another acrylic on linen, “Wave Goodbye,” reminded me very much of the many flower and skull “portraits” of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Hrbacek Gold Cornucopia

There are other art history references as well. In the two paintings “Dark Monarch” and “Gold Entwined,” which both have gold backgrounds, there is the feeling of Chinese painting and Gustav Klimt’s use of simple gold backgrounds to bring a sense of fantasy and eroticism to his paintings. “On My Back” and “Bright Boy” remind me of the figurative painter David Wojnarowicz, who often uses the “camouflage” effect to make his work more militant.

Yet, despite all of these references, Hrbacek’s paintings remain fresh and vital by increasing our awareness of who we are, and where we live.

Vibrant and Varied Works on Paper

January 9, 2009 - 21:36 — ddlombardi

Winter Salon: Works on Paper
Björn Ressle Gallery

Björn Ressle has had galleries in Stockholm, Bogota, and now New York, specializing in abstract, minimal, and conceptual art. When I asked him the theme of his current exhibition, he responded "nepotism" with a knowing smile. I like that, the straightforwardness, the honesty -- and when you look at the roster of names, which include Carl Andre, George Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, George Condo, Neil Jenny, Alex Katz, Sol Lewitt, Dennis Oppenheim, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Richard Tuttle, and more, you can't help but be impressed.

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Mary Hrbacek finds her muse in tree forms, most often gnarly, rugged ones that seem ages old and wise. Her approach is to render them almost in silhouette, leaving small touches of subtle light and line to bring out the twists and turns in the form. With this comes a personification, a liveliness of the subject that defies the two-dimensionality of the media. Even in the areas of paper left untouched, Hrbacek -- whose “At It” is pictured at the top of this page -- reaches great aesthetic strength and magic.

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The M Mag
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Hrbacek Entwined - Chris Twomey

Gnarled branches and splayed tree trunks twist with kinetic energy in Mary Hrbacek’s charcoal drawings, “World Tree Series,” an exhibition curated by Matt Semler, director of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery. A culmination of ten years of experience in tree and figure drawing has resulted in Hrbaceks' confident prowess in taming the vine medium to actualize complex visual and conceptual ideas.
Inspired by metaphors of transformation in the poet Ovid’s “The Metamorphoses,” Hrbaceks’ leafless tree segments seem to reach out or clutch suggestively, hinting at aspects of the human form.
    From afar, each of the ten black and truncated shapes can read as undulating calligraphic marks contrasting sharply within the confines of the 20 x 30 in. white paper. Upon closer inspection, the shadowed recesses of a growth-like hollow evoke childhood memories of faces in the dark. Flailed bark becomes a woman’s torso and muscular protrusions suggest thrusting muscles or fists. Primitive archetypes lay beneath the surface of the forms, while the mind is encouraged to create fantasies in the dark from the suggestive tonal gradations.
    “Entwined,” a literal reading of two tree trunks entwined as one, is both sensuous and sensual. The dusty charcoal moves in tandem with the regenerative and passionate rendering of the trees’ embrace. The surface moves with the artist’s subtle shadings, so that a knotted whorl becomes a demented eye socket or a vortex sucking at a lover’s loin.
A magical forest is conjured; an adult version of childhood memories from, say, the film The Wizard of Oz. There, a forest literally comes alive. Trees grow faces/limbs and use them to pelt Dorothy, Toto, et al with apples from their own branches.
That same sinister duality exists in Hrbaceks’ “World Tree Series,” where nature can turn on man/woman by becoming man/woman-like. Finely honed shapes, which are presented as stately and majestic, turn with a blink into secret and psychic perpetrators.
    Hanging these potent totems in the Roger Smith Hotel Lobby Space is delightfully subversive. The customers busily come and go, unconsciously passing the familiar botanicals during their progress. The churning, subconscious life force of the magical trees are poised, ready to encroach on the clients’ perceptions. Like these trees, our human surface resembles the expected; our construct outwardly shows itself by its cover, bark or voice. But, as our ancestors knew with their ancient wisdom as old as the tree, it is the undercurrent beneath the forms that gives us character. It is the subtle perversions and dreams that inspire life.