Lexington, KY - On the marble walls inside Fifth Third Bank located on West Main Street hang a series of paintings that possess a familiar glow. They are new paintings that make up a project titled Illumina, conceived by local artist Marjorie Guyon.
Illumina speaks of disengagement, engagement and recovery: It disengages from the norm, from recent trends, and employs something far more enduring in the realm of artistic expression. This project invites us to understand the vital role that each of us must play as we clamber up from this economic downturn and redefine ourselves in Kentucky, in America, and in the world of contemporary art.
Disengaging the norm
Illumina is made up of ten paintings that hang on the walls of a bank, but it is not commercial. These paintings are not for sale. They are not an addition to any kind of corporate collection. They have been hung in this space because it is not a museum or gallery. Guyon's original plan was to travel this exhibition to failed institutions across the country; places that needed a little hope and healing. She admits that Sue Barnes, who was her confidant, and Sue's husband, Sam, president and CEO of Fifth Third Bank, were very brave to indulge to her.
This project did not require any type of grant; in fact, it does not require support, but adopts a novel idea - that art needs no assistance, but assists. It will not open with some exclusive reception for the patrons of art because it is not about power or money or connections.
As object, IIlumina is not something you can own, but as concept, Guyon hopes you realize that it is yours. Illumina is her gift to our community, a gift of artistic talent and vision but is rather a gift that will remain on view for only two months.
When I first learned of Guyon's project, I was uneasy that this series of paintings seemed to challenge another norm, one that occupies a good deal of my time and lends what I do some credence - namely, recent trends in contemporary art.
Guyon is a painter who prefers to disengage from current tendencies in contemporary painting. But how can an artist be successful and ignore what the art market demands? Why isn't Guyon, like so many contemporary painters, wrestling with the residue of modernism's assault on her chosen medium, an assault that began with the destruction of the two-dimensional illusion and escalated in the slogan "painting is dead?"
In fact, in the May 2009 issue of Art in America, Raphael Rubenstein argues that today a certain impossibility exists for contemporary painters. For them the creation of a masterpiece is no longer viable. Recent, and not so recent, developments shun skill and polish for a more casual, dashed-off, tentative or unfinished appearance, the results of which have become all too familiar - finished paintings that appear to still be in the preliminary stages of execution; paintings about which we might carelessly reply, "Oh, I could do that!"
Illumina resists this present circumstance that Rubenstein identifies as "provisional painting." There is nothing temporary or conditional about the ten paintings that comprise Illumina. They are not pending confirmation; they confirm.
Guyon separates from these developments in contemporary art because she could care less. Her work has for many years explored the universal purpose of art that transcends such concerns. In fact, Guyon chose to live and work in Lexington because she did not need the pressure or distraction of the art market.
"I think it's normal for an artist to feel like they need to live in a center of the art world like New York. But it can really work a number of different ways." For Guyon, living in Kentucky is key to the development of her work: "Here, I don't feel any pressure to have to be part of the latest artistic trend in order to make it. That sense of space and distance has enabled me to investigate my own vision."
Engaging the masterpiece
In merging concept and illusion, Guyon does not turn away from the masterpiece, nor does she pretend to be the master. However, she does evoke, in the most sentimental fashion, the familiarity of mastery, skill, talent, greatness and authority - rare terminology in the realm of contemporary art.
At first glance, the imagery in these 10 paintings seemed to lean on the philosophical doctrine of aestheticism, dictating that art must be about beauty and nothing more - beauty found in perfect form and proportion of ancient Greek or Roman statuary or in an idyllic landscape.
On deeper inspection, however, the project is laden with moral and sentimental messages. According to her biographer, Guyon's artistic goal is to connect with the essential elements that reflect knowledge from the past, a knowledge and spirit that needs to endure and be upheld.
"These are the most important things that one would want to pass on to their great-grandchildren; the things that they will need to remember," Guyon said.
The effect of Guyon's paintings, and the project itself, is not meant to be passing but timeless. The imagery does not appear contrived but rather dusted off or uncovered. Are they images of ideals forgotten and only recently remembered again? Do they signify something we need for recovery?
The paintings resemble relics from an archeological dig, a dig that marries the tendencies of conceptualism with the reemergence of representational imagery (which, by the way, was a trend gaining public attention in the first years of the 21st century).
Could this be the next artistic trend: the lack of one? A return, instead, to artistic talent and vision that is not dependent on the historical continuum, that is an investment in permanence and virtuosity? The metaphor extends neatly to our current economic crisis, but also to contemporary painting.
Recovery
"I am not really for cutting edge. I don't care; there are edges being cut everywhere," said Guyon.
Life in the trendy lanes has left many without fame or fortune, and all of us with new priorities. In the midst of our current crisis, what conversations are more important than those taking place here and now? What is more important than the contributions each of us makes to it?
The Webb Companies and Fifth Third Bank hung the 24-foot banner on top of the bank, advertising this show as its invitation to each of us. It is an invitation to those with little exposure to art, those who live here and focus elsewhere, those who know nothing about art, and those who are certain Lexington, Kentucky, could not possibly be engaged in contemporary art-making practices.
It is an invitation for all of us to find our talents and give them as freely as Guyon has given Illumina, even if only for two months.
Guyon uses marble dust to create these works. Finding the material purely by accident, she admits that "bit by bit, I found out what marble dust could do, the way it creates luminosity that fits exactly into the world I was trying to create," said Guyon. Could it be that that world is one wherein the light radiates from within (rather than waiting around for a spotlight), where its inhabitants focus on ways they could make it glow brighter? Just a thought.