Contemporary Abstraction at Moberg 

“Passage” by Derrick Breidenthal, 84 inches x 120 inches, oil on canvas.

“Contemporary Abstraction: Collaging Space and Color” is playing at Moberg Gallery through Sept. 2. It’s an ambitious exhibition that includes works by 20 artists from around the world. All work in abstraction. That means this show is interactive. No two people take the same thing away from viewing an abstract painting. Everything is totally open to self-interpretation. 

Charoula Nikolaidou’s mixed media works on canvas, “Dream,” “Truthful” and “Alignment,” could be taken as old-fashioned abstraction. The young Greek artist barely disguises her admiration for Matisse’s Mediterranean period. Gay colors, tropical fruits, a polka dot palm tree and an all-female cast of characters demonstrate why the artist is popular enough to be represented by Saatchi. From the sea to the mountains. Canadian Alayne Spafford’s mixed media works use many of the same colors as Nikolaidou. Her technique, which she founded, is collage-like with drips. It is called “shou-sugi-ban,” meaning burnt cedar. It’s totally new to me, and I like it. There are letters in the collage, most in Swedish. So, there is mystery brewing in the Alberta mountains.  

Teo Nguyen, a Vietnamese-born Midwesterner, is well known for his more realistic landscapes of prairie loneliness. These abstractions are less desolate, but large white space dominate like a forlorn winter sky. Al Harris-Fernandez never lets his paint despair. “Jam,” “Stacking” and “Map” are busy yet without confusion. The former director of the Sioux City Art Museum is a Google Earth painter, hovering over the grids of the world. Lola Montejo is English-Spanish and lives in Denver where she teaches painting at Metropolitan State. Her paintings here seem to be in metamorphosis — changing colors and shapes in front of our eyes.  

Derrick Breidenthal is a Kansas City artist who steals the show for my eyes. He paints landscapes that are always abstract. Huge skies and intimidating weather threaten each place that poses for him. Ruben Sanchez is another star of this show. He describes himself as “born in Madrid but adopted by Barcelona and Dubai.” He began as a graffiti artist who used paint to beautify, not to deface, and then became a serious skater. His works make one gleeful. Moberg archivist Michaela Mullin calls him “Almodovarian” after the great gender-breaking filmmaker Pedro Almodovar of Madrid. Fun amidst the chaos, and even squalor is here. But Sanchez also learned something daring and slightly off from Barcelona’s great architect Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí died when he walked in front of street car, distracted. Today it might have been a skateboarder. That’s the kind of goofiness Sanchez incites in viewers’ minds.    

Speaking of Spanish influences, Omaha artist Justin Beller’s “Navigate 1” and “Navigate 2” are reminiscent of Picasso’s bull and war-torn scattering in Guernica. Only a bull-fighting country like Spain would know that those two subjects are more alike than incompatible. Orson Welles mused that the reason soccer players became bigger stars than matadors was a war-taught sympathy for the bull. 

TJ Moberg’s “Flyover Country” and “Hooping and Looping” are collages of latex paint skins. Adhered together to create a subtle layer cake of paint, these large-scale works are very tactile. In Mullin’s commentary — “The former is made of mauve and gray skins, invoking the 1980s color code, which perhaps reached flyover country a little late. The latter is more vibrant, where Moberg uses bolder, vibrant colors to accentuate the many circles, their lost holes nearby, though forever separated from the original circle.” Chuck Hipsher says he was taken to a psychiatrist at age 8 because of his obsession with art, particularly with painting three dimensional crucifixes. He is still making art that upsets some but moves others. 

Twelve more artists complete this marvelous, international exhibition. ♦