CHARLES SCHWALL Eat Me, Drink Me series
bruno david gallery
CHARLES SCHWALL: EAT ME, DRINK ME SERIES February 9 - March 10, 2007
Bruno David Gallery 3721 Washington Boulevard Saint Louis, 63108 Missouri, U.S.A. info@brunodavidgallery.com www.brunodavidgallery.com Director: Bruno L. David This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition CHARLES SCHWALL: EAT ME, DRINK ME SERIES Editor: Bruno L. David Catalog Designer: Yoko Kiyoi Design Assistant: Claudia R. David Printed in USA All works courtesy of Bruno David Gallery and Charles Schwall Cover Image: Untitled XXIX (Eat Me, Drink Me series) detail, 2006 Oil on canvas, 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm)
Copyright Š 2007 Bruno David Gallery, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of Bruno David Gallery, Inc.
Contents
Essay by William Herndon Afterword by Bruno L. David Checklist of the Exhibition Biography
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Essay by William Herndon 2
Looking with Soft Eyes: The Paintings of Charles Schwall “Everything that has form has a shell ontogenesis, and life’s principle effort is to make shells.” J. B. Robinet
For the patient eye, Charles Schwall’s paintings come to life, and abound with hidden delights. When thoughtfully viewed over time, the organic forms in these paintings seem to expand and contract, then either envelop or burst free of one other. Just as tide pools, full of life, light and water forms, become increasingly compelling the more one stops and looks, so it is with Schwall’s paintings. He has mindfully, gently, coaxed into existence mysteriously alive and visceral images. The body of work exhibited at the Bruno David Gallery is a selection of paintings from a larger series. Schwall states, “The Eat Me, Drink Me series consists of twenty five paintings completed over a three year period. It is the synthesis of many aspects of my work; a long standing interest in the curvilinear and organic formations found in nature connected to growth, and the use of imagination intimately related to water imagery and the life sciences. The work began with the word phrase eat me, drink me, which initiated the impulse to combine the visual elements in a specific manner. The visual vocabulary that resulted from the word phrase revealed many connections to past work, and pushed my ideas into new forms.” The essential idea that he investigates is a heightened empathy with the organic, growth, and living energy. The guiding question in his work is: How can the language of painting be used to investigate the perpetual flux of growing and expanding organic systems? Within the Eat Me, Drink Me series, in particular “Untitled XIX,” presents a circular pink shape floating, or sinking, within a field of glowing, otherworldly yellow. The flesh- colored pink shape is held by a delicate membrane of whitish grey. Thick as butter, the deliciously sensuous pink shape sheds the white grey like a skin. Or, is it being swallowed whole by the mouth-like dark pink? Inside the light pink shape the eye is drawn into the off-center core of the painting, an amoeba like linear element. This entity expands, or contracts, as if breathing. Taken
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together, the juxtaposition of unfamiliar, yet warm, vivid colors in the painting adds to the sense one has of seeing beneath the surface and into a microcosmic landscape, or beyond into a cosmic expanding universe. Other paintings in this series employ slight variations of these living shapes that move, rotate, and change color in a subtly shifting slow motion dance. Despite their definite boundaries the shapes nonetheless undulate and change within and of their surrounding medium. Schwall’s use of color adds to this effect as colors intermingle with each other to create an effect that is unconventional and delightful. The layering of paint in the fields of color adds to the paintings’ depth and luminosity. Schwall composes his paintings slowly; he makes slight adjustments in tone and hue as each new layer of paint is applied. Although the final result seems opaque, the layers underneath inform and enrich the color effects seen by the viewer’s eye. The color combinations in these works have lightness in tone and value, as they interact together to form unique color harmonies. Schwall has gleaned from nature the forms within the forms, even, one could say, the landscape within the landscape. He reveals for us elegant unseen structures of a place, and a life form, where human perception and organic life forms meet. By virtue of ‘looking with soft eyes,’ at this body of work, we see that what seems constant, like an array of leaves or the shifting shades and shapes in a landscape, is in fact ever-changing, sliding, breathing. If you give yourself over to these visual spaces and stay there a while, they begin to come alive. These floating, organic shapes invite the viewer into the quietly beautiful life of a cell, a cosmos, another world of organic life. — William Herndon
William Herndon is a writer. He lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. This essay is one in a series of the gallery’s exhibitions written by fellow gallery artists and friends.
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Afterwords by Bruno L. David 6
I am pleased to exhibit a new series of new paintings by Charles Schwall at the Bruno David Gallery. Support for the creation of significant new works of art has been the core to the mission and program of the Bruno David Gallery since its founding. Charles Schwall’s remarkable and compelling work makes him one the most impressive artists of the gallery. Charles Schwall’s paintings are informed by curvilinear and organic formations found in nature that are often associated with life, growth, and regenerative energy. In each work, interdependent shapes and lines overlap to form one entity, which evokes an interior place of gestation or incubation and also establishes a dialectic between containment and lack of containment. The paintings are created through additive and reductive processes of layering paint, as well as the refined use of gesture, contour, silhouette and color. The resulting images possess subtle relationships between shape, line, hand-rendered edges and a surface that reveals a sense of touch. As an artist educator, Mr. Schwall has studied the educational system in the municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and coedited and co-authored the book, In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia.
— Bruno L. David
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Checklist of the Exhibition and Images
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Untitled XXIX (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2007 oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 10
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Untitled XXIX (Eat Me, Drink Me series) detail, 2007 oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 12
Untitled XIX (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 14
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Untitled XX (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 16
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Untitled XXI (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 18
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Untitled XXII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 20
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Untitled XXIII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 22
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Untitled XXIV (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 24
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Untitled XXV (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 26
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Untitled XXVI (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 28
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Untitled XXVII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 30
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Untitled XXVIII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 32
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Untitled XVII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 34
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Untitled XVIII (Eat Me, Drink Me series), 2006 Oil on canvas 40 x 42 inches (101.60 x 106.68 cm) 36
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Charles Schwall: Eat Me Drink Me Series at Bruno David Gallery (Installation view, detail), 2007 38
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Charles Schwall: Eat Me Drink Me Series at Bruno David Gallery (Installation view, detail), 2007 40
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CHARLES SCHWALL Born in Denver, Co Lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri EDUCATION M.F.A. B.F.A.
1991, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 1987, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2007 2000 1994 1991 1988
Bruno David Gallery (project room), Charles Schwall: Eat Me, Drink Me, St. Louis, MO World Trade Center RCGA, Charles Schwall, St. Louis, MO Allegro Gallery, Form in Flux, Kansas City, MO Washington University Gallery of Art, Charles Schwall, St. Louis, MO University of Missouri Conference Center, Charles Schwall, Kansas City, MO
SLECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
Synchronous Events: Charles Schwall & Chris Kahler, Rueff Gallery at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN Charles Schwall & Jason Urban, Schmidt Arts Center at Southwestern Illinois College, Belleville, Il OVERVIEW_08, Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO Nineteen St. Louis Painters, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO, curator: Douglass Freed, (catalogue) OVERVIEW_07, Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO 27th Annual Faber Birren National Color Exhibition, Stamford Art Association, Stamford, CT, juror: Gary Carrion-Murayari Selections from the Contemporary’s Flat Files, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Summer Exhibition, Space B, New York, NY Gallery 20th Anniversary Exhibit, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Art, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO Group Exhibition, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO Bi-National Art Exhibit, U.S. Embassy, Asuncion, Paraguay, curator: Maria Velasco, (catalogue) Group Exhibit, Ninth Street Gallery, St. Louis, MO
2000 1999 1998 1997 1995 1994 1992 1991 1990 1987 1986
6th Annual Regional Exhibition, St. Charles County Community College, St. Charles, MO Group Exhibit, Bi-State Development Company, St. Louis, MO 5th Annual Regional Exhibit, St. Charles County Community College, St. Charles, MO Sharpening the Edges: 2nd Annual Invitation Exhibit, North Gallery, St. Louis, MO Woman in the Broader Sense, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, St. Louis, MO, juror: Britta Konau Two Person Exhibit, St. Louis Regional Commerce & Growth Association, St. Louis, MO Group Exhibition, Lisa Steinmetz Gallery, St. Louis, MO Honors Exhibition: Selected Artists from Art St. Louis X, Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Art St. Louis X The Exhibition, Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Art Faculty Exhibit, Forest Park Community College Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO Group Invitational, Culver Gallery, St. Louis, MO Two-person show, Forest Park Community College Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO Brave New Pixels 3: A Computer Generated Art Exhibit, A.R.C. Gallery Chicago, IL, (catalogue) Group Exhibit, Randall Gallery, St. Louis, MO BFA Exhibition, Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kansas City, MO The 29th Chautauqua National Exhibition, Chautauqua Art Association Gallery, Chautauqua, NY, juror: Charles Clough, (catalogue)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Herndon, William Bonetti, David Cooper, Ivy Martelli, Rose Bonetti, David Cooper, Ivy Duffy, Robert
“Looking for Soft Eyes: The Paintings of Charles Schwall,” Catalogue Essay. Bruno David Gallery Publications, 2007. St. Louis, MO “Artist Celebrate Elliot Smith with Works Incorporating 20,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 3, 2004. p. F6. St. Louis, MO. “1984-2004 Twentieth Anniversary Celebration at Elliot Smith,” Riverfront Times, September29-October 5, 2004, p. 178. St. Louis, MO. “Elliot Smith: The Gallery Looks in the Mirror for it’s 20th, 2004, Riverfront Times, September 15-21, 2004, p. 32. St. Louis, MO. “Everything Show,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 18, 2004. p. F8. St. Louis, MO. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Art…”, Riverfront Times, July 28-August 3, 2004, p. 48. St. Louis, MO “Art St. Louis X, Exhibition Review,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 13, 1994.
ARTISTS Margaret Adams Dickson Beall Laura Beard Elaine Blatt Martin Brief Lisa K. Blatt Shawn Burkard Bunny Burson Carmon Colangelo Alex Couwenberg Jill Downen Yvette Drury Dubinsky Corey Escoto
Beverly Fishman Damon Freed William Griffin Joan Hall Takashi Horisaki Kim Humphries Kelley Johnson Howard Jones (Estate) Chris Kahler Bill Kohn (Estate) Leslie Laskey Sandra Marchewa Peter Marcus
Patricia Olynyk Robert Pettus Daniel Raedeke Chris Rubin de la Borbolla Frank Schwaiger Charles Schwall Christina Shmigel Thomas Sleet Buzz Spector Lindsey Stouffer Cindy Tower Mario Trejo Ken Worley
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