Rule No. 1: There is no rule.
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Gregory Lomayesva is not the loudest of the younger Native American artists who refuse to be encapsulated by stereotype crafts and "Indian art." But he is among the most persistent in terms of reinventing himself. Lomayesva's exhibition
Bounce
, at Ursa at the Railyard, recalls his earlier efforts at Peyton Wright and Art & Industry where, rather than push his easy-to-like, established style, he chose to edge into uncomfortable territory and risk failure over banality.
A wordworker in the Hopi tradition, by family and training, the artist built a collector base by creating unconventional, but palatably Native, works. But Lomayesva's commercial success has always gone back to the studio, where he has challenged himself to push further. Most frequently the work manifests in an evolving series of paintings and large-scale, mixed-media prints with copious handwork.
Now Lomayesva has infused his paintings with large-scale wooden sculptures, and vice versa, with several works appearing to be studies for, or echoes of, each other. These works, however, are contemporary Americana in their entirety-bulbous portrayals of life at the end of our collective rope in Western civilization-rather than leaning on Native symbologies. Lomayesva's paintings have always done the same, delving into population, transportation, crowds, consumerism, personal relationships, etc. But these large wooden works, covered with almost Fauvist explosions of color, are entirely new.
As such, they are precarious. For all his commitment to execution and technique, Lomayesva has a saccharine sensibility that makes some of these figurative works reek like failed poetry: A woman on a park bench, her head hung down; a man watching TV from the womb of his EZ chair, surrounded by beer cans. Other images feel too crafty, too Sundance catalog, such as the rows and piles of carved women's shoes Lomayesva arranged in heaps and ***image2***tangles. But the forms and colors that make these totems predictable, dominant cultural moments contain more than such easy surface dismissals allow credit for.
There is a contrast between materiality and representation, between the obscenity of the color and the deadness in the faces. Sinking into each work in this way, especially surrounded by an entire room full of such bizarre effigies, adds an undulant dirge to what was, moments ago, merely trite.
Does Lomayesva's targeting of stereotyped emotions and situations of discontent and emotional distance reflect an intentional (or even unconscious?) repetition of the hackneyed, much in the same way Native artists have been pushed into repeating motifs? Perhaps not. But effectively, it is so. And for part-time art aficionados who traipse the gallery scene and yank salespeople with their large checkbooks and continuously wavering commitment, there will be a desperate distance staring back at them from the wan demeanor of Lomayesva's sculptures.
Only the brave and the stupid will purchase these works, the former knowing what they have and caring little about anyone else's valuation of it and the latter, well, at least that money is going into art. Lomayesva's foray into sculpture is not a simple one. It is risky, wobbly, startling, slyly successful on occasion, heartily stumbling on others. It is worth the hope that he will do it again.
The exhibition's paintings don't push as hard as the sculptural work, but some of them delight, even if with proven tricks. The artist's combination of acrylic paint tempered with pencil, delivered through loose draftsmanship, is almost uniformly figurative, save the still lifes. The works' most charming, if emotionally and culturally dark, characteristic is a penchant for editing through negative space, color omission and/or simple slashes of paint that effectively censor the eyes or mouth of a figure. Overt, almost neon highlighting, is another tool used to great effect; big, sloppy lines that should never work to convey the subtlety of shape but impossibly just do.
Also a musician, Lomayesva has yet to truly unleash the freedom combined with arch organization that he implies in his recording and electronic compositions, but it is coming closer. An inevitable merger of these disciplines will eventually result in the fullness of what Lomayesva has to offer.
The Ursa space is ostensibly committed to large-scale and installation-type projects. Lomayesva's use of the space stands on its own, but leaves us asking, "What if he had truly taken over the space, rather than hanging works on the wall and populating the floors with his sculpture?" There is a contemporary stylistic sensibility, hybridized with a background in craft and precision, lingering in each of Lomayesva's efforts. We've yet to see it apex.
The next step is to loosen the ties, so easily bound around Santa Fe artists, about expectations of what art is supposed to be. I don't recommend weird-shaped paintings or combining painting and sculpture or anything horrifying like that. Rather, the idea is to quit bending the rules and just forget the notion of rules altogether.