Joseph Winterhalter presents several small-scale works on paper and canvas at the Aisle Gallery through June 19. The artist is known to many area residents for his impressive large-scale work shown last year at the Weston Art Gallery (click here to see archive).
For me this was my first encounter of his work. Many of his compositions on canvas and paper (such as F.o.R. #4 , 2009 right) are minimalistic so as not to distract the eye from their central tension: the formal, even austere, repetition of brick-like geometric patterns with paint softened through subtle variation via texture. He experiments; for example, he sometimes uses foreshortening techniques on the ‘brick’ lines. The color hues are ‘contained’ within the ‘brick’ forms, allowing the two elements to occupy their own spaces.
Another body of four works on paper use machine-perfect text upon similar backgrounds, sans the brick form. The text here intrudes formally on the subdued backgrounds, but the meanings of the textual phrases - ambiguous, cryptic, philosophical - are more accordant. Perhaps the impulse to counter the color hues with abstraction, achieved earlier via the geometrical brick forms, is here explored via words.
-A.C. Frabetti
Joseph Winterhalter, 'Flowers of Romance' at the Aisle Gallery, 424 Findlay St. 3rd Floor, Cincinnati, OH 45214. M-F 1-4 or by appointment 513.241.3403
The Aisle Gallery benefits from its location above the Carl Solway Gallery as well as an attentive selection of regional artists.
In photo:
F.o.R. #4 , 2009. Latex, acrylic, graphite, oil, wax on Arches paper, 30" x 22".
c. 2009 Joseph Winterhalter. Photo: Krista Gregory, Aisle Gallery.
c. 2009 Joseph Winterhalter. Photo: Krista Gregory, Aisle Gallery.
