A Studied Intimacy: Vesna Jovanovic And Michael Tegland At Packer Schopf Gallery

By Carrie McGath in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 10, 2015 7:00PM

A quietly intense exhibition currently on view at Packer Schopf Gallery showcases the work of two artists who analyze intimacy and interiors. Vesna Jovanovic’s Foreign Bodies and Michael Tegland’s Shimmer deliberate actively on the gallery walls. The result of their studies, and what makes up the images and forms they each devise, express an intriguing juxtaposition. The flowing anatomical pastel “portraits” of Jovanovic’s work interact across the gallery with Tegland’s monochrome process-laden works of latex and graphite on birch wood panels.

The large-scale works on polypropylene that make up Jovanovic’s series have an x-ray aesthetic, depicting anatomical renderings containing something foreign to the body, and showing man-made materials inside a physiological space. Her works in the series look as if the work of Grey’s Anatomy illustrator Henry Vandyke Carter mated with Georgia O’Keefe’s wildly intimate labial flowers. "Sewing Button" is a piece with a cellular structure to it, with opaque bursts of gouache moving toward the graphite cross-hashing that mutes the work. The button is foreign to this body, but it also seems to be the root, birthing bursts on the other side of the polypropylene. The blood-red, cilia-bordered globule contrasts with the remaining intestinal landscape of the work, and looking at Foreign Bodies, viewers are enlisted to think about intrusion in a natural space and how that space is affected, visually and otherwise.

The smaller-scale works by Tegland contain his process through intricate renderings of organic forms. His work as a museum preparator influences his discerning intimacy with each line and shape. The panels are arranged in sets of three and their poetic aura bring to mind the literary convention of tercets, three-line stanzas that emanate rhythmically, sometimes rhyming, resulting in a momentum that is lyrical and succinct. Terms, Sincerely L. Cohen and Bird’s High are one set of three panels hanging together and are akin to this three-line poetry form. These three pieces hanging together are much like a stanza with the rhythmic, repeating forms evoking a cadence like visual rhymes.

This is a hypnotic and engaging show pondering space and what occupies it. The uniqueness of these artists, especially shown together, come from their deepened awareness and expertise of the smallest nooks to the largest openings in form and image, bringing the interior outward for a deepened study of a profound beauty in the organic of occupied space and process.

Through Feb. 14 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake St.