Jolly Matters

The material world is teased in Jolly Matters. It is an exhibition composed of plastic, paint, wood, and paper. Then there are the intense and extreme colors of the objects which, like a pink bubble-gum painted room, make for good ambiance and a most agreeable mood.  The lively and vibrant hued things chosen for Jolly Matters are objects that ostensibly produce sensations of cheerfulness and glee; perhaps together they might even raise our serotonin levels after a long dark winter.  These objects by the four artists are in fact only superficial introductions to more incisive implications and intentions. They are not just quirky fanciful things with strikingly crafted allusions to happy psyches and elevated states of mind but also objects that present some complex and complicated associations.

Marilyn Lerner

As in the paintings by Marilyn Lerner, there is more to her meticulously painted structures than the manipulation of color and motif. Her exacting and almost mathematical organization of color relationships are collected from her interest in the geometric patterns of Indian and Jain painting. She manages to float pigments on slick, hard surfaces, creating a kind of transcendent geometry that seems to illustrate other worldly puzzles.  Her paintings aspire to the transcendent with the intent to elevate the viewer’s predilections and aspirations for a pleasurable state of mind although she offers no code to her personal symbols; only a small window into an east/west dream…the viewer is an Alice in Wonderland down a very problematic rabbit hole.

John Monti

John Monti’s work is altogether another matter, however seemingly jolly. In his material world, the plastic substances he chooses for his objects reference a darker side to his comic imagery. His works communicate an ironic confidence in an un-changing synthetic utopian world where brightly colored things, of which there is no short supply, will be sustainable and where a “happy” future is facilitated by seductive illusions to prosperity. The longevity of his plastic objects is, by the very nature of the material, resistant to change. The metaphor is: Society’s desires equal its possible demise.

Barbara Schwartz

Barbara Schwartz was one of several artists who sought to vitalize abstract painting by making it more dimensional and like Marilyn Lerner, tried to link it to non-Western traditions. Her constructions from handmade paper with areas of brightly colored dabbles build a complicated visual uncertainly about the object’s shape and structure even though they are balanced organic and geometric forms.


Schwartz’s objects encourage physical movement as the viewer’s vision moves across the object’s frontal planes to the sides with other flat surfaces. Schwartz was inspired by the gestures and costumes of Thai dancing that she has rendered in her objects with a sense of elegance and gracefulness. However, there is oddness about these objects. The expressionistic quality of the roughly textured surfaces is oddly cartoonish. They appear as caricatures of something unrecognizable.

Daniel Wiener

Engaging with Daniel Wiener’s work is like daydreaming or partaking in the spirit of a child’s fairy tale -things coming out of nowhere and then taking an imaginative leap. His objects hang from the ceiling from filament, conveying the feeling that they are floating, like islands hovering in the air. But the daydream also has a dark side as there is always something unsatisfying and disappointing about a daydream. It consistently contains an unfulfilled wish, something ultimately vacant for the dreamer. Wiener says he is interested in this absence, or sense of loss, that for him is at the heart of daydreaming.  Wiener is looking for truth or answers through in his work but he also seems to be looking for an exit. His objects are, to some degree, that escape hatch. But escape from what?  Guilt, worry, anxiety, shame, self-hatred, an inability to communicate, boredom, fear?  These are the emotions hidden beneath the “whimsical” exterior in his work.

In Jolly Matters there is no manic state of mind expressed, only a more complex reading of visual objects that beguile us with eye candy that happens to have a chewy center.

Curated by Romanov Grave