By: Gallery Crawler
Leah Tinari, Hear No Evil, See No Evil, 2008, gouache on paper, 11 x 15 inches. Courtesy of Mixed Greens.
Leah Tinaris’ latest show at Mixed Greens, comprising a mix of large canvases and small works on paper, has a self-consciously Rabelaisian vibe. Tinari creates these festive works through a process that involves painting scenes based on digital pictures she takes while out and about with her friends.
The most interesting aspect of Tinari’s work is the dialogue that her snapshot-as-painting device creates between her work and the ghosts of the works by well-known Photorealists, such as Richard Estes, Ralph Goings and Chuck Close. Although Tinari works from photographs, she clearly has little interest in creating photorealist works like Close, et al. The skin of her subjects is too highly colored, reduced to a soft geometry of dark against light. Hints of sepia creep into her black and white canvases; slashes of neon hues appear in strands of hair. Tinari also invites viewers to play Photo Hunt in her series of works on paper based around a man in a red and navy striped polo shirt. Hey, his tattoos changed! The DVDs moved! By taking liberties with reality, Tinari creates a more atmospheric or charged version of the reality that we would like to believe we exist in while out painting the town.
Tinari intends the scenes depicted in her works to look spontaneously joyful. While viewing the works you are supposed to think, “They look like they are having fun. I want to hang out with these people.” Even, “I want to be one of these people.” Looking at these works, I was reminded of gawker.com’s “Blue States Loose” or hobogestapo.com—informal images of preening people communicating through look and posture, “I’m having a fabulous time. Are you?”
“Sneak Peek” represents a missed opportunity. There is room to examine the genre of party photograph and Tinari could have taken the opportunity to look for signs of boredom, exhaustion or vulnerability in these purportedly candid photos. Instead she stuck to the irony-free surface of the images. Furthermore, the self-obsessed characters in Tinari’s work lower her exploration of reality and stylization via the media of digital photography and painting to a gimmick. “Sneak Peek” is a bright, risqué and fun group of works, but nothing more. What you see is all you get.
“Leah Tinari: Sneak Peek” at Mixed Greens runs through March 14th
Mixed Greens
Take the C or E train to 23rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 23rd Street and 11th Avenue
Gallery hours: M-Sat, 11am-6pm
Gallery website: www.mixedgreens.com
Artist’s website: www.leahtinari.com
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