Imagine an AI deep dreaming a rainbow catastrophe of cracked LCD screens and you’ll be in the ball park of Megan Bickel’s solo exhibition of an event, assigned a date that is too early at Bunk Spot Gallery. Abstract compositions are rendered in vivid colors across the surfaces of 12 paintings like algorithmic camouflage to confound facial recognition. Think Gerhard Richter meets Lisa Frank.
For all the abundant references to virtuality, the Louisville-based multidisciplinary artist and Art Academy of Cincinnati alum’s paintings have a commanding physical presence. Globs of paint, chromatic smears and transparent washes interplay with holographic patterns, resulting in light and color that changes as you move from side to side. The slipperiness here between the physical and virtual invites questions regarding our relationship to images, which Bickel has written about in two accompanying texts. The ease and lightness with which they pose such allusions accounts partly for why I’m drawn to them. But to engage with them as theory-objects would be to miss the point. Rather, these paintings ask to be enjoyed on their own ineffable terms. I could look at them for hours.
of an event, assigned a date that is too early runs through February by appointment at Bunk Spot Gallery (544 E. 12th St., Over-the-Rhine). More info: facebook.com/bunknews.
