They, and Gideon Bok, are nothing but subjective

By BRITTA KONAU | November 23, 2011

Music has always played an important role in Bok's life and artistic practice, often providing titles for paintings. The covers portrayed here are of folk, rock, heavy metal, and punk music albums; one can sense that their arrangement has been given careful consideration though whether it follows autobiography, chronology, graphic similarities, or some arcane system remains unclear. However, what is palpable is nostalgia that, as much as it is autobiographical, is also communal. Music, of course, only exists in time. Various emanations of time and ephemerality thus tie the drawing and paintings together — even metaphorically becoming them — in this thought-provoking installation in a most appropriate music and performance venue. The other shared element, perspective, is treated as a willed construction, multiple and contingent. Our perception of time and space deeply shapes our experience, which is subjective and communicable only to a limited degree. Bok masterly succeeds in translating and sharing it, exploring painting's relationship to the description of emotional form.

Britta Konau can be reached at curatorbk@gmail.com.

"GIDEON BOK: WALL DRAWING/COVERS" | through December 17 | at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St, Portland | 207. 828.5600 | space538.org

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