Last night’s art opening was a lot of fun. It was well-attended, well-received and well, pretty interesting. The show was smaller than I initially expected; the gallery space was tight, but the pieces were expertly presented and visually arresting. Kudos to Joe Bravo and his curating prowess; he unified two disparate artists magnificently and the whole show felt both relevant and timely. Alex Rubio’s work was a visual punch to the face. His color palette was outrageously saturated and festive, an eye carnival complete with organ music. I felt his “Abbadon” diptych was probably his most successful piece, and despite its mannered nature and literal metaphor, clever and expertly executed. As painters, we’re taught to avoid certain color combinations -red and green being one of them. Yes, they’re complimentary colors, but that’s not always advantageous. We refer to these combinations as “loaded”, because if you’re not expert with their application, these colors carry baggage (in this case “Christmas”) which can supercede and taint the artist’s intent. But he pulled it off. The piece was vibrant, bold and energetic. The canvas was filled with movement and there was a stark, graphic audacity which echoed Rubio’s heritage and attitudes.

In contrast, Graham Toms’ work was far more subtle and introspective. Toms’ paintings were no less powerful, but instead of being a sharp jab to the eye, they were more a sucker-punch to the mind. His tentative technique belied a very deep connection to his subjects and a thoughtful exploration of the symbols and metaphors of the Apocalypse. He clearly demonstrated an affinity for the stated intent of the show, and whereas Rubio’s work traded heavily on the brute force of his personality, Toms’ work evoked a provocative dialog with the viewer, coaxing and teasing, shocking and teaching with an almost playful naivete. The grotesque is a subject very near and dear to my heart. I’ll probably write a considerable amount about it in the near future but for now, suffice to say the deformation of an ideal, moving a notion from the literal to the symbolic, can often reveal the sublime. To decode a masterful painting is take a journey, led by the hand of the artist. And at the end of the journey, if the meaning resists closure and impales you in the moment as you struggle to rectify “what category should this fall under?”, “the sacred or the profane?”, “the beautiful or the ugly?”, you have achieved the wonderful transitional state we refer to as “Paradigm Crisis”. It’s often a brief moment, but in that glorious, ephemeral time, the mind is open to any possibility and intuitive leaps are your only way out of the rabbit hole. Graham Toms’ work challenged the easy narrative of comprehension with an almost corrupted representation, a touch of irony and a healthy absurdity. His Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse looked like a merry-go-round at first glance, but on closer inspection, revealed a horrific composition of despair and death. This is a rare insight and a wonderful gift which I hope he continues to refine. Toms’ idiolectic representation threaded in and out of his pieces uniformly and with the conscious yet hidden deliberation of a poet.

In summary, I could not imagine two more different artistic approaches to the same metaphors. One would be tempted to pick a favorite, but I won’t. However, if I were to summarize my emotive response to the show with a music metaphor, I would go as far as to say Rubio was tonight’s one-hit wonder. In a handful of paintings I’ve come dangerously close to taking the full measure of the man and his message. While he’s catchy, infectious and utterly refined, unless he finds something new and interesting to sing about, no amount of polish will find me tapping my toes to his next melody. Toms, on the other hand, was an album you bought because it had a B-side track you were interested in. But the more you played the album, the more you discover new merit and meaning in all the tracks, and it quickly grows comfortable and leaves you wanting more. Both artists put on a wonderful show and I’m eager to follow both into the future. And I’m left with the overwhelming sense that they’ve reminded us that our perception is, and always was, a process -a progressive narrative. And, if these are the songs to be sung from the end of everything, it’s not so bad because oh, what a symphony it was.