Diem Chau, Donald Cameron and Stephen Warde Anderson at Packer Schopf

by Robin Dluzen

A visitor with Donald Cameron's paintings.

Three artists celebrated their openings Friday, February 19, 2010 at the expansive West Loop gallery, Packer Schopf. Donald Cameron’s Aesthetics and Content and Diem Chau’s Sojourn shared the main space, while Stephen Warde Anderson’s Mystical Worlds occupied one of the basement galleries. Though the artists vary widely in style, context and content, a common thread of material novelty connects the three exhibitions and illustrates Packer Schopf’s general aesthetic.

Donald Cameron’s mid-size oil-on-linen paintings are accompanied by a film and both demonstrate the same style: fluorescent paints flatly abstracting in a manner reminiscent of digital pixilation, punctuated by the herringbone weave of the linen surface. The abstraction here is mild; after a brief observational effort, the content of “disaster and trauma” is easily identified. The contrast between the bright colors and the dark subject matter is a quick read that displays, pretty didactically, that the intended interpretation is of how we receive traumatic information and images in contemporary society. Cameron guides so severely in our receptions of the paintings that both the viewers and the paintings’ resonance are stifled.

Stephen Warde Anderson and visitor with Anderson's work.

Downstairs, the Anderson paintings are heavily contextualized by the artist’s biography; a self-taught, ex-Navy quartermaster, Anderson picked up art-making late in life. The mid-size, acrylic and prismacolor on board paintings are housed in heavily ornamented frames, and depict a range of fantasy creatures in typical scenes. These scenes sometimes reference aspects of contemporary life, such as mermaids using various Apple brand gadgets. Stylistically, the paintings are mimicking a medieval-y illustrative mode of forward facing or profiled figures in “pre”- perspective space. The work is banking on Anderson’s outsider status, however, unlike the value of interesting outsider art–which offers the art world a glimpse of something else– these paintings are giving us a cliché.

But a beautiful break in the gimmickry is Diem Chau’s embroidery and found object installations. Dozens of porcelain dishes are employed as supports, pseudo-stretchers, for delicate images embroidered on vaporous silk organza. The found plates and cups, combined with the homespun nature of the embroidery and the cropped figures in 60s-style dresses reinforce Chau’s Sojourn title with their emphasis on fleeting memories. In addition to

One of Diem Chau's embroidery on porcelain works.

the earnest sincerity in content, Chau’s embroidered found objects occupy a fascinating space between two dimensional and three dimensional art practices; the thread makes the two dimensional images, though also becomes a sculptural element as it leaves the silk surface to come out toward the viewer, or recede behind the silk back into the recess of the dish; the works are three dimensional objects, however they are wall-bound and have a fixed front and back designation. In addition to this body of work, Chau also exhibits a collection of hand-carved Crayola crayons, which are linked to the novelty of her fellow exhibitors, but are saved from that simplicity by their proximity to the strong, sincere context she creates with her embroidered found objects.