John Nativio’s Changing Environments

John Nativio: Encompasses Transmission II.

In an age where the comfort of mankind has been seen to trump that of the environment and sources of energy to maintain the ever expanding growth of human consumption have become increasingly expensive or dangerous, John Nativio takes a moment to step back and attempt to examine how our progress effects both our psyche and the world around us. Transmutations, an exhibit of Nativio’s paintings, drawings and sculptures at the Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery, presents a body of tightly connected work all devoted to the purpose of understanding human existence within a manufactured landscape.

The paintings, with little contrast and a common red hued color pallet create a comforting, and naive sense that is enhanced by reoccurring colorful blocks recalling those that children would play with. The sharp rendering, odd combination of construction materials with everyday objects and furniture combine in the still life compositions that could be found randomly scattered in a shed or basement. This is a staple of magic realism which had become a leading stylistic tradition with mid-twentieth century Cleveland artists like Paul Riba and John Teyral.

Nativio goes further than representing the oddities of the everyday by combining these compositions with views of the natural world diminished in scale by our product driven lives. In these surreal glimpses into nature, he conjures landscapes with brooding storm clouds, and choppy waters. When it is calm, nature is typically depicted as isolated in a box, being covered by a blanket, or devoured by construction equipment. The latter becomes interesting when put into the context that Nativio owns a home construction company. Repeatedly, he also returns to imagery of nuclear power plant cooling towers as reminders of not only the required energy to create the world we live in, but also how we remove the natural world to make way for more expansion while changing the environment in unforeseen ways.

John Nativio: Transmutation V

What is lacking in this examination of a man made world is imagery of man. While architecture and furniture are regularly shown, only two of the still life paintings represented include a human figure. In Transmutation V, a farmer can seen reaping his crop by hand, however, the blocks on the table below suggest the industrial nature of today’s farming and food industries with gear and belt like shapes. This leaves an ambiguity for the viewers that is also found in other paintings and forces them to think about whether or not our progress is positive or negative. Perhaps Nativio is suggesting it lies somewhere in between.

John Nativio: Collapsing Mass

When Nativio does turn to the figure in his paintings, they appear more like figure studies lying across a flat platform with sectioned off panels depicting interior and exterior spaces. The figure doesn’t become powerful until he transforms it into his sculptural work. Here, his figures are off balance and on the brink of falling. In Collapsing Mass, the figure is appears to be made from corroded man made pieces showing that Nativio has taken position against consumer progress which is even more strongly felt in his busts. Unearthed Amalgamation III consists of the same corroded texture. The segmented pieces that make up the bust appear to be separating as the head drops its gaze to the floor. The sense that the bust is about to roll off the pedestal and fracture into pieces exemplifies the artist’s interest in the psychological effect the modern world has on humanity, though it appears to be devoted to those that get lost in it.

John Nativio: Unearthed Amalgamation III

Transmutations, on display from May 20^th through July 2^nd, comes together to form a cohesive and poignant exhibit that subtly debates environmental and consumer issues. It is curious though that these works are not fresh to the market. This exhibit could easily be titled Pre-Visions III as the work had been previously exhibited at the Beck Center for the Arts in a show titled Pre-Visions II that ran from January through February. As that title suggests, the work was also shown earlier in an exhibit called Pre-Visions from October to November of 2010 at Ohio Northern University’s Elzay and Stambaugh Studio Theatre galleries.

This brings up a good subject for discussion in the local art world. How often should work be re-exhibited? How much time between showing a piece, let a lone an entire exhibit, is appropriate? Going to openings of group shows, it is obvious some artists rely on exhibiting pieces multiple times. While this is an easy way to stay in the public’s eye, viewers will remember what they see and end up thinking those few pieces are all the artists’ have. Perhaps the worst case of reshowing work recently, Transmutations begs the question, how and why does the same work get shown so often, so quickly?