Richard Barlow and the manipulation of meaning

By Sheila Regan Fri., Oct. 14 2011 at 10:05 AM

Categories: Art

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Welcome to the Open by Richard Barlow

In "A Crow's Nest," an exhibition of work by Richard Barlow at Macalester College, the artist manipulates meaning in five different series that include letterpress prints, drawings, etchings, monoprints, paintings, and mixed-media works.

Because the school's art gallery is currently under construction, the show takes place in a temporary art space located in a little house on the edge of campus, a setting that works perfectly with the pieces that Barlow presents. The space has a quaintness and sense of picturesque that much of his art possesses as well, and the fact that the gallery is in a house adds to the sense of transferred meaning.

from the "Covers" series by Richard Barlow

The first series of works that you encounter when entering the building is a collection of letterpress prints of U.S. Naval Ships called Recognition Study Cards. They are based off of cards used to train sailors to recognize the silhouettes of ships. Barlow writes in his notes that he finds it amusing that the ships are given the names of U.S. presidents, especially because the ships can change shape. The series, which is striking and simple, offer an opportunity for the viewer to ponder our own meanings of presidents, from founding fathers such as George Washington to more recent presidents like George Bush, within the context of these ships.

The other series presented on the first floor of the house is called Covers, made with silver leaf on vellum. Here, Barlow appropriates imagery and titles from record albums in a way that drains meaning and context from the original work. With such titles as The Girl from Ipanema and Think Pink, Barlow creates idyllic landscapes inspired by the images that the record albums evoke. The shimmery silver used to create these works of trees, waterfronts, and so forth adds a hint of irony that speaks to the source of the works.

from "Recognition Study Cards" by Richard Barlow

Going up the stairs of the house-gallery, you'll see a series of work, titled M3 Monoprints, which Barlow says were inspired by a cabin of the same name he stayed in when he taught at Interlochen. Here Barlow takes wooden floorboards to make monoprints, which become a kind of landscape, with the break in wood creating a horizon, and the woodgrain becoming a seascape. The stairwell is poorly lit, and there's a kind of cabin-y feel to the location. There's a constant pull between seeing these pieces as what they are, and recognizing them as transformed images.

The first two rooms on the second floor of the house hold Barlow's Welcome to the Open series, featuring landscape images taken from SUV advertisements. The series, which includes chalk wall and small, iron-oxide drawings, are interesting in that they are manipulations of manipulations. That is, advertisements are made to manipulate the emotions of the viewer to encourage them to buy a product. Here, Barlow further manipulates those images to offer a critique of that manipulation. He illustrates the irony of idyllic landscapes being used to sell SUVs, which in their very nature destroy the environment used to sell the product. The large wall drawings are stunning in their stark, black-and-white, ominous message.

From "M3 Monotypes" by Richard Barlow

The final room in the exhibition includes Barlow's Daily Bromides, an ongoing series of watercolor postcards based on a single, 19th-century photograph by Fox Talbot. The original piece, of reflected trees, gets reproduced over and over again, until the original image becomes almost unrecognizable. The ink on paper works, placed close together, show a study on the nature of variation.

Taken as a whole, the works Barlow each have intrinsic beauty in their own right, but what is great about the exhibit is the way that the artist challenges the viewer to think about how people perceive things, illustrating both the image-maker's role in manipulating artworks, but also in the power the viewer has to bring their own perception to the experience.

The Macalester Art Gallery is temporarily located at 1665 Princeton Avenue.