State of the Art

This past Friday my roommate and I made our way over to Wicker Park to visit Park Schreck Gallery. They had an opening reception for their latest exhibit State of the Art. The exhibit features artists Ray Becoskie and Jane Carney. I went to the reception having no idea what to expect; I only knew I was attending a contemporary art gallery.

The gallery was very open and inviting and the artists were easy to engage in conversation about their work. The gallery has the simple, cutting edge appearance of a modern establishment, touting white floors and walls with exposed ceiling pipes. The gallery’s clean cut look allows for full attention and engagement with the art work. 

The very first thing I noticed about the works of art dispersed through out the gallery was the complimenting contrast between geometric and organic forms. At first glance, the dripping round shapes resting above free flowing lines in Jane Carney’s paintings reminded me of flowers. After speaking with her, I found out that her current series was based upon flowers. It is inspired by her summer spent in Colorado. I definitely felt her paintings reflected upon wild flower fields. 

Ray Becoskie’s art work has a significantly different presence than Carney’s, but they complemented each other perfectly. Both of them had a nice toned-down color scheme going on. Jane Carney’s paintings were all black, white, and blue. Ray used a lot of neutral colors especially as a background. His unique line based art work laid beautifully on top, painted in unique shades of all colors. He usually kept it to about five colors a piece. He conducts truly unique free hand compositions of geometric based shapes. The paintings definitely made me think of layouts for cities, houses, and buildings. Becoskie says all of his inspiration come naturally. He took some technical art classes after being asked to attend school. However, he chose to continue pursuing his art in the way he felt was best. He has a good thing going on his own.