“THE OBSERVER IS THE OBSERVED”

The exhibition of the popular American abstractionist Shane Guffogg at the National Art Gallery will be open until April. He was born in Los Angeles and received his B.F.A. from Cal Arts. He employs the glazing technique once popular in the 16th century. Glazing is superposition of thin transparent layers on a painting. This technique allows the artist to get deeper colors and shades. Guffogg mainly paints in oil, pastel, gouache, and watercolor. The exhibition features 73 works of the master: paintings and several sculptures. Guffogg is very popular in the US and Europe as the acknowledged representative of the contemporary American abstract painting school. His works are in collections of the Hollywood stars and politicians, the Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Duke University, Fresco Art Museum in California, and others. Some of his exhibited works in Baku are dedicated to Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, who was the master of the glazing technique. Guffogg himself calls his creations ‘wordless poetry’. The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan, the US Embassy to Azerbaijan, and Arts Council Azerbaijan.

It all started with the travel...

While traveling in Europe in 1980, Shane Guffogg unexpectedly for himself opened the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, who struck him with his mystical vision, and the genius of Rembrandt, who was able to convey fantastically the light. Later in his life, he has discovered the modernist poetry of Thomas Elliott. All of this became part of his inner world reflected in the production of his mind and soul, and transformed into endless artistic variations on the theme of philosophical rethinking of the relationship of the man and the universe. Later, the exhibition has gained a figurative name The Observer Is the Observed.

For a long time people thought that the world "out there" was a separate substance while the objective universe is subject to its own laws inaccessible to the mortals. Artist refutes this view most of us, says that there is no isolation of the worlds, but is their organic fusion and an endless flow of each other. He feels, the basis of the physical world is not physical, that the line separating "internal" and "external", does not exist. Every moment of life - this is the moment of his choice. Man - is always here and now. A field of activity of his spirit - is boundless. It is seen as a paradoxical unity of the carnal and the spiritual "I" in the artist's work; temporal and timeless destiny, and as a result - the unity of all human life trailing time and eternity.

Sculptures

The metaphysical view of Guffogg on the essence of things in the context of Man-Universe is reflected not only in his paintings but also in sculptures on display in the halls of the National Art Gallery. The artist goes beyond the conventional perception of the world, trying to find the point which lies between the "conscious and the unconscious." He was bored and uncomfortable in the world of reality, which fits into the concept of canonical realism. And for him to "immovable rotating point of the world" is the concentrated essence of things, which can lead to the comprehension of truth. And it is that no time. Identifying this "immovable point" in a moment of creative inspiration, the artist understands the essence of immortality. Is there a definition of art as "a philosophical abstractionism"? This could be called the artistic experiments of this author. Or the "philosophical abstractionism."

The Murano glass sculptures

These magnetically attracting works are made of glass. The colors and shapes of these sculptures hold attention, seizing you subconscious and shining a sense of aesthetic pleasure. That’s what the artist says about them: "The idea of ​​turning a negative medium or a form into a three-dimensional object was based on the invisible-visible. These glass sculptures are both organic and architectural, masculine and feminine. I want them to be instantly recognizable but also retain their mystery."

The artists are recognized as the heralds of their time. Shane Guffogg is no exception. Speaking the expressive language of metaphor, his creativity provoke us to search for the intellectual component in the metaphorical and metaphysical space of his works.