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"Hunters" mixed media
on paper/canvas
"Coeur de Passion"
mixed media on paper/canvas
"Bernini's River" mixed
media on paper/canvas
Opposite Top: "La Ligne"
mixed media on paper/canvas
Opposite Bottom: "Reflection"
mixed media on paper/canvas
© Wilder/Enge Collaborations
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SEEN
AND UNSEEN
New Works
on Canvas by Carol Wilder and Larry Enge
March 22-April 7, 2001
Reception with the artists: Saturday,
March 24 6 to 8 PM
"Since 1994, trips to Europe
have inspired us to use the Gothic forms of the cathedral structures
in our collaborative paintings. We have used images of Gothic
interiors photographed in France, Spain and Italy and combined
them with figures of African descent. These structures offer
us many possibilities for expressing the mystery, spirituality,
drama and poetry that we find in the Gothic.
The experience of wandering through
these cathedrals revealed how we could use the inspiration of
the lofty vaults, curves, intricate closed and open spaces and
allusions to a forest canopy to provide a matrix for figurative
responses to the architecture. In the process, architecture became
a place where figuration and abstraction could meet.
During our trip to Italy, we
viewed frescoes and photographed sculpture of Michelangelo, Giotto,
Cimabue, and others who have influenced the figurative aspect
of our collaborative work. We have merged these figurative influences
with African imagery by appropriating figures from the Sistine
Chapel and from South and West African photographs and juxtaposing
them in these spaces. This approach represents a response to
the physical presence of the gothic structure and a search for
a visual synthesis of these two seemingly incongruous influences.
The use of the figures in these
medieval spaces contends with spiritual and physical transformation,
and relationships between figure and architecture. It is though
the use of the figures and the gothic spaces that we search for
the mystery and poetry of the ancient as we work to express our
parallel cultures of European American and African American."
Carol Wilder and Larry Enge began collaborating in the Summer of
1994. The work included in this exhibit is representative of
their direction as an artist team up to the present. As Wilder
and Enge developed their own common aesthetic, while incorporating
their different styles, a concept emerged that represented the
paradigm they share. That paradigm suggests that the physical
world is not the only existence; there is another world that
is involved in a mysterious way with the physical, although unseen.
The relationships between the
elements in their paintings reveal the influence of the realm,
which is unseen. It is not bound by what is normative in the
seen realm; hence, figures are often floating or exist in other
unusual juxtapositions.
The objective of appropriating
figures from sculpture and paintings is to capture the unseen
nature that is embodied in the poetic quality of much of the
Baroque--so what is seen reflects what is not seen. The Gothic
and Romanesque interiors, the contrast between light and dark
and complementary colors serve to complete the idea that these
two realms clash and communicate
 
DALLAS
MORNING NEWS SLIDE SHOW
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