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Kim Kimbro and Miguel Osuna
To My Widow and New PaintingsLawrence Asher Gallery
5820 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 100, Los Angeles
(323) 935-9100 www.lawrenceasher.com
To My Widow and New Paintings
Kim Kimbro, I could tell you of this journey, oil on canvas, 18" x 18", 2008
Transposing ghosts of photographic imagery into haunting paintings through various degrees of allegorical remove, Kim Kimbro explores the final voyage and tragic death of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Borrowing from J. M. W. Turner's habit of endowing romantic seascapes with literary themes, Kimbro resurrects fragments of the farewell letter to Scott's wife found on his frozen corpse and appropriates them as titles for her uncanny depictions of sled dogs, sailing vessels, and large marine creatures. Scott's final words thus underscore our awareness of life's fragility and transient nature.
Kimbro's ability to sculpt form and pull texture out of opaque passages and liquid washes of oil paint makes pleasurable a close inspection of her work. By maintaining veiled, matte-like finishes, and by purposefully referencing flaws found on the surface of the archival photographs she uses as source material, the artist deepens the sense of mystery in these images. Shifting through a nuance of colors but favoring ultramarine blue, Kimbro intensifies the chilly sense of isolation and loss conveyed by her solitary figures, adrift in the Antarctic.
Miguel Osuna favors a warmer, more dramatic palette, privileging light, form, framing, and point of view over specifics of place. A native of Mazatlán, Mexico, Osuna moved to California in the mid-'80s after completing architectural studies in Guadalajara. The titles of his work migrate back and forth between Spanish and English, connoting a bilingual's ability to communicate in both worlds.
Sensations of motion and travel enliven Osuna's compositions, reinforced by strong diagonals and vanishing horizons in paintings like Parabrisas (windshield). Noon Delivery/Getting Up speeds us past an industrial site that could have been featured in an Ed Ruscha book. The harsh outdoor lighting that illuminates Luz Mercurial proves alluring from a distance. Osuna renders the mundane worthy of attention.
Kimbro's ability to sculpt form and pull texture out of opaque passages and liquid washes of oil paint makes pleasurable a close inspection of her work. By maintaining veiled, matte-like finishes, and by purposefully referencing flaws found on the surface of the archival photographs she uses as source material, the artist deepens the sense of mystery in these images. Shifting through a nuance of colors but favoring ultramarine blue, Kimbro intensifies the chilly sense of isolation and loss conveyed by her solitary figures, adrift in the Antarctic.
Miguel Osuna favors a warmer, more dramatic palette, privileging light, form, framing, and point of view over specifics of place. A native of Mazatlán, Mexico, Osuna moved to California in the mid-'80s after completing architectural studies in Guadalajara. The titles of his work migrate back and forth between Spanish and English, connoting a bilingual's ability to communicate in both worlds.
Sensations of motion and travel enliven Osuna's compositions, reinforced by strong diagonals and vanishing horizons in paintings like Parabrisas (windshield). Noon Delivery/Getting Up speeds us past an industrial site that could have been featured in an Ed Ruscha book. The harsh outdoor lighting that illuminates Luz Mercurial proves alluring from a distance. Osuna renders the mundane worthy of attention.