SELECTED REVIEWS

 

2011     Edward Rubin, "Mary Hrbacek’s Wounded Forests Touch the Human Heart," Adobeairstream, April 13
             Edward Rubin, "Entwined: Into the Woods! In Search of a metaphor for the Human Condition,"
               Artes Magazine, April 9
             Edward Rubin, "Mary Hrbacek at NY’s Creon Gallery: Entwined Depicts the Forest Primeval,"
               Berkshire Fine Arts, April 15
             Robert C. Morgan, "Entwined: Selected Paintings and Drawings by Mary Hrbacek," Catalogue Essay
             John Mendelsohn, "Entwined, Mary Hrbacek’s Paintings at Creon Gallery in New York City," dart International,
               Volume 12, number 2, p. 36
             Edward Rubin, "Entwined: Into the Woods!," Dialog of Arts. Moscow, Summer
             Ed Edward Rubin, NY Museums, CURATOR’S CHOICE, "Mary Hrbacek at CREON GALLERY in New York City,"
               Gallery Gazeteer, April 2011
             Edward Rubin, "Entwined…Metaphor for the Human Condition," Huma3.com, April 18, 2011.mht
             Edward Rubin, "Entwined: Into the Woods!...," NY Arts Magazine, p. 144-145, Summer
2009     Dominick Lombardi, "Trees With Personality," Culture Catch, May
             Dominick Lombardi, "Winter Salon, Works on Paper", d’Art International, Winter
             Joel Simpson, "Winter Salon," The M Magazine, February 2009
             Dominick Lombardi, "Vibrant and Varied Works on Paper," Culture Catch, Jan.9
2006     Julie Oakes, "X-Country Selection," Headbones Anthology, December
             Chris Twomey, "Entwined," Drawings, NY Arts Magazin,. May/June.
             Chris Twomey, "A Place To Hang," Review, Resolve Forty, On-line Magazine, December
2002     Korotkin, Joyce, Mary Elizabeth Hrbacek "Metamorphoses," NY Arts Magazine, January
2002     Lily Faust, Catalogue Essay
1999     U.S. 1, Princeton, NJ, TAWA INVITATIONAL, Mary Person Hrbacek, "Close Call" reproduced, July
1998     Simone, Ashley, "Art Show Alive and Well at Muscarelle," The Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg,
               December.
1992     Bledsoe, Shari, "Drawings As Varied As Their Number"” The Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, April

  
 

 

 

 

  
 

Culture Catch

Icons by Mary Hrbacek

Creon Gallery April 22 - May 2, 2009


Trees with Personality

by ddlombardi

  
 
Hrbacek Moving On

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
 
 
Hrbacek On My Back
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.

 

 

D. Dominick Lombardi is an artist with representation in Kasia Kay Art Projects and in Chicago, Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY, and ADA gallery in Richmond, VA; a writer with Sculpture, Sculpture Review, DART, and NYARTS; and an independent curator.
 

 

   

 

The M Mag
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The M Mag
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The M Mag

 

 

NY Arts review

 

Hrbacek Entwined - Chris Twomey

 

Mary Hrbacek Split Decision

 
 

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.

  

 

 

  
 

 

MARY HRBACEK’S “Metamorphosis”

By Lily Faust

In her recent charcoal drawings and paintings, Mary Hrbacek depicts a fanciful view of nature that is imprinted with the human spirit. Her imaginative work involves the anthropomorphic possibilities within that most prevalent emblem of nature, the tree, yielding a hybrid materiality between it and man.

As whimsical as the results may be, these drawings are clearly informed by the physical world: tree trunks that sprawl to catch the air, roots that reach into the earth like fingers, stubs of trees interrupted by death or decay. Mirroring the source of Hrbacek’s inspiration, her drawings comprise legible images that are clearly about the land and its outpouring. Simultaneously, though, the viewer finds herself in an eerie topology that is charged with hints of human beings; --a branch ending in a fist-like stub, or a limb yielding phallic connotation. Hrbacek seems to explore the amalgam of nocturnal and hidden facets within creature hood, chancing upon a human face on a hollowed tree trunk or a female torso on the rippled bark. The dimensionality of the figurative elements is enhanced by Hrbacek’s excellent control of charcoal. She utilizes it skillfully, grafting wild beings of her imagination into reality.

Conventional notions of abstraction are also present, characterized by sinuous, energized lines that demonstrate the artist’s intuitive take on nature as a field of discovery. These lines represent the pronounced linearity of branches, interrupting the softly contoured tree trunks, inviting the eye to travel from one edge of the paper to the other. The jagged outlines of leaves create loose patterns that, in a formal sense, contrast playfully with the solid, voluminous tree trunks. These linear markings mottle the drawing’s surface, creating ripples on the pictorial space. Subtle details such as knots in the wood serve a dual purpose. Both as a knot in the tree trunk and also as the eye of an unknown creature, they serve their figurative purpose. They can also be read as circular elements in an abstraction, creating the necessary rhythm in the balance of fluid lines, black and white contrasts and vertical volumes. But beyond that, these drawings are amalgams of nature and its human face, involving metaphors of transference and transformation. They convey Hrbacek’s personal narrative, recalling that precise moment in time when the spirit of man materialized in hauntingly conceived scenario.

  

 


 
 
All images © 2009 Mary Hrbacek. All Rights Reserved.