By The Light of Desire
by Bascove for The Three Tomatoes
Drawing the figure has as many variations as history itself. There is great enjoyment in recognizing the differences of lush romanticism of an Art Nouveau figure, one interpreted by the structural complexities of Cubism or the shimmering color of Impressionism. This season a gallery in Williamsburg, Figureworks, has been showing an extensive Three-part exhibition: “Exploring 100 Years of figurative Art”. Representational, traditional, abstract, commercial and decorative works have been thoughtfully brought together to consider fresh juxtapositions of this universal subject.
One of the featured artists is McWillie Chambers, an artist who brings us images of the male figure created with light and translucence. A Louisiana native, Chambers found a home in NY where his work has been justly celebrated for the past 25 years. His unique art radiates exuberance and tenderness. There is also a mischievous streak in Chambers that can surface in the most unlikely places: with his mastery of brushwork he is heir to David Hockney’s early masterworks of sensuality. His paintings of young men on the beach portray the light of the sun illuminating the sky, the water, and figures in colors of aqua, hot oranges, fuchsias, and rich ultramarines. They retrieve the memory of the heaviness of heat and the carelessness of summer. Chambers has made studies of the works of Thomas Eakins, capturing the essence of youth and innocence in those early days when the body is free to explore while dreaming in one’s own Eden. He has continued the narrative of the innate natural expressiveness of the male nude.
His fluid brushstrokes completely integrate his figures in to their surroundings. Light from a window dissolves a figure in to pure gesture. This spontaneity of movement is particularly eloquent in the otherworldliness of dancers surrounded by prisms of color, football player with the glare of sun on their bodies, and an easy, established camaraderie. A consummate draftsman, a few strokes can become the swell of the ocean, the setting streaks of sun or the line of a bare shoulder or neck. Intense emotion is induced through radiant hues. Faces often dissolve, like the rest of the body, into pure abstractions of color – heat and light pervade all.
And always, always, there is desire; there is eroticism, joy in the pleasures of easy movement and those of deep repose.
His ‘Dancer” series explores the fluency and strength of the trained body, the human form glows from the surrounding darkness of the theater. Strokes of violet and dark blue establish the background and continue, with only a confident change of color, to become the glowing pink/silver of the stage itself.
In “Yellow Vase – 8 figures”, with a gentle roguishness, and a few deft strokes, Chambers transforms even the commonplace in a subject of longing.
Figureworks is showing a luminous screen bringing together many of Chambers splendidly observed images with one magnificent work. With visions of the sun behind fragments of various artworks that resolve in the color of sand at the base, it culminates in the wit of Trompe l’oeil. “Revealing Screen” reinterprets several paintings, prints, and drawings to become both a record of a vacation and a true object of desire.