The work of Tony Scherman is a perfect example of art in which the actual subject is not the object(s) portrayed.
Visitors to our current exhibition of 12 works on paper by this prolific and well-known Toronto-based artist will see images in mixed media that depict things like food on a plate, a woman’s face, flowers, and a bird’s head. If viewers take a look at these and then leave for home without any further thought, they will have missed the boat. For every image that Scherman selects to render is actually a heavily laden symbol, and often of something crushingly horrible and intensely redolent of life’s darker side.
Beginning in the 1990s (after more than two decades working and exhibiting professionally) Scherman began to explore creating works of art that depicted scenes from works of literature, beginning with Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and moving onto Banquo’s murder by Macbeth, imagined from Shakespeare’s play.
In the late 1990s he fully hit his stride with his About 1789 series, which centred on Napoleon and the French Revolution. About half the works in our exhibition are from or relate to this group of work, beginning with the portraits of Gillian Anderson, who became famous as Agent Scully in the X-Files TV series (which was hugely popular in France, so Scherman had her face stand in as the representation of the abstract notion of Liberty).
In a sidebar to his About 1789 series, Scherman explored Hitler’s Nazism and the Final Solution, drawing chilling parallels between these events. The images of food relate to the meals served to participants in the Final Solution meetings.
Subsequently Scherman created a Blue Highway series (largely executed in blue paint, thought by many people to be the most metaphysical of all the colours) about people who had suffered from soul loss largely due to their celebrity. The people depicted in these paintings ranged from Marilyn Monroe to Kurt Cobain.
Next came his works around the American Civil War, which he titled About 1865. In the early years of this century Scherman was absorbed by the Oedipus myth.
And so it goes, as he continues to think up and tackle topics that allow him to delve deeply in to the human psyche.
Even Scherman’s flower paintings, which seem straightforward enough, and are lovely and luscious depictions (often of peonies), so obviously a pleasure to paint, are also such for us to behold. But they are also all about taboo, and the consequences we face upon breaking a taboo, of any sort. The flower paintings have been concentrated metaphysical meditations on the artist’s part for several years now.
Of course viewers can simply ignore all the emotional and psychological content of Scherman’s work and just enjoy the creations for their expressive and skillful use of artistic vocabulary and means; Scherman’s sheer facility would be hard to match, let alone out do.
Some works may seem quickly done or dashed off, but in fact, each is a search, a plumbing, and can take years to finally leave the studio, with all sorts of adjustments and reworkings finally making the pieces complete in the artist’s estimation.
Scherman also works in large scale on canvas. Works on paper, like these on view, are a companion practice, allowing him to work out ideas more rapidly and on a smaller scale.
Come and see what you make of these works. The show runs at the Kelowna Art Gallery until July 29.
