"Louis St.Lewis, by framing contemporary personages within his distinctive artistic point of view has produced a cult of the personality, not the least of which is his own.
Lawrence J.Wheeler, Director
North Carolina Museum of Art
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Daphne & The Folly of the Duc Du Bois
In the world of art today, originality is an endangered species. Most artists simply copy prevailing styles, and the result is a feeling of deja vu in the majority of galleries you visit. That is not the case with the art of Louis St.Lewis, who is currently showing at Jernigan-Wicker Fine Art. While definitely one of Andy Warhol's feral offspring, St.Lewis possesses a true originality that slaps you directly across the face with its freshness, brashness and honesty. Not one to play it safe, the artist goes way out on a limb, and lures you out to those fragile branches with his enchanting creations and biting wit.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Amazing Technicolor Visions of Louis St.Lewis & Sean Yseult
Sometime when we weren't looking, North Carolinians became a prominent if unexpected presence in this city's art and culture circles. Celebrating this Creole-Tar Heel connection at Farrington-Smith are the works of hard-rocking New Orleans resident and North Carolina native Sean Yseult and fellow North Carolina School of the Arts (before he was thrown out) veteran Louis St. Lewis. A former bassist with White Zombie and The Cramps, Yseult proffers her own brand of retro-psyche-neo-pop silkscreen prints while St. Lewis goes ballistic in a series of visual screeds against the likes of a certain U.S. president and a few others. Among their more intriguing works are some collaborative collage portraits of musicians, many of them local, suggesting that soul mates need not live in the same state to share a similar state of mind. --ÊD . Eric Bookhardt
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
ARTPAPERS Review of Louis St.Lewis
TPAPERS review of Louis St.Lewis
Louis St.Lewis :Fin de Siecle
Anne Heller
ARTPAPERS
Louis St.Lewis’ ” Fin de Siecle” is an exhibition of three-dimensional plaster assemblages and xerographic collages that borrow heavily from classical Greek and Roman mythology. The quote in the window display sums up his artistic vision, philosophy and purpose : ” I have seen the future and don’t want to go there. Let me be the angel of history, Stay, Awaken the dead, make whole what has been smashed.”
The principal images in this exhibit are either mythological characters such as Mars, Aphrodite, Leda, Cassandra and Cupid, or religious personages such as the Madonna and Saint George. The subject matter is clearly derivative of classical and Renaissance art.
In the xerographic collages, the figures are printed in black onto clear acetate, sometimes elongated, sometimes widened, occasionally blurred to soften the image. Colored images ( sometimes repeating, sometimes very faint and hardly recognizable) or a strategically placed splash of color are painstakingly arranged underneath the transparency. These works, which one might dismiss as simple copies , are much more complex than those unfamiliar with the world of xerography might imagine. It takes a certain skill to slowly drag an image across a machine to achieve the beautiful and haunting distortion St.Lewis seeks. There is purpose to these collages, emotion and ideas are subtly conveyed using the products of modern technology.
In The Angel of History, St.Lewis xerographically widens and blurs an outline of an angel. Underneath this acetate angel, one can faintly see gondolas floating down the waterways of Venice. The subtlety of the scene beneath the angel – the calm, slow passage of the gondola- suggests the slow, subtle passage of time.
In Madonna of the Night Wing, the acetate image is a standard Renaissance Madonna and Child. Underneath the Madonna’s face and hair is a detail of the white, tan and gray feathers of an owl’s wing. The feathers intensify a feeling of tenderness and wisdom.
The Kiss is a beautiful piece in which the frame and mounting of the work adds to its validity. The acetate collage itself is rather simple and small. A close-up of Cupid kissing Psyche, with simple yet vibrant colors underneath, fills a small oval frame. The frame is mounted in the center of a much larger rectangle covered in plush red suede. The brash, large border contrasts strongly with the tender image within the oval frame.
St.Lewis’ three dimensional assemblages are masterful fusions of classical images, plaster casts of body parts and various synthetic items. The greenish-gold tint to the “skin” heightens the sense of timelessness and classical beauty, and the tensions created by the strong design reveals much about St.Lewis and his perceptions.
In I Should Have Listened to Cocteau, plaster hands and arms shield a plaster face, crowned with plastic flowers, from flames cut from styrofoam in the background. The background is a slab of slate-gray styrofoam. The piece is based on an incident in which a Russsian ballet designer supposedly asked Cocteau and Picasso at a party ” If your house were on fire and you could only take one thing with you, what would you take?” Picasso answered ” The nearest thing to the door”, Cocteau answered “The Fire”.
Mars on the Tigres-Euphrates is St.Lewis’ commentary on U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The background, an American flag, is painted in muted tones. In a narrow doorway cut from the center, the figure of a man from the waist up hovers. Wooden straws poke through his cheeks and temple. Teeth are bared, glue dripping from the dentures like the heavy thick saliva of a rabid dog. The man, leaning over a young boy, looks like s subdued monster temporarily pressed into service as a guard; the boy lies on his back, kicking. Graffitti chalked on the flag – including the words ” Yankee go Home,” a partial map of Babylon, and a seraphim-makes tangible the hatred inhabitants of the Middle East feel for this symbol of American imperialism.
The Art Critic expresses the aggravation caused St.Lewis by his adversaries. In this assemblage, a minotaur butts its horned head into a gold frame. The plaster figure within the frame breaks into pieces, its body parts jumbled. A finger catches a tear. A dislocated arm covers the head. A brown eye stares from a nipple. The background of the painting is ablaze in orange and yellow.
While St.Lewis’s materials and sources are familiar- found objects, xerography, assemblage, mythology- his work is unique because of the witty and macabre, yet beautiful ways in which these elements are combined.
Louis St.Lewis :Fin de Siecle
Anne Heller
ARTPAPERS
Louis St.Lewis’ ” Fin de Siecle” is an exhibition of three-dimensional plaster assemblages and xerographic collages that borrow heavily from classical Greek and Roman mythology. The quote in the window display sums up his artistic vision, philosophy and purpose : ” I have seen the future and don’t want to go there. Let me be the angel of history, Stay, Awaken the dead, make whole what has been smashed.”
The principal images in this exhibit are either mythological characters such as Mars, Aphrodite, Leda, Cassandra and Cupid, or religious personages such as the Madonna and Saint George. The subject matter is clearly derivative of classical and Renaissance art.
In the xerographic collages, the figures are printed in black onto clear acetate, sometimes elongated, sometimes widened, occasionally blurred to soften the image. Colored images ( sometimes repeating, sometimes very faint and hardly recognizable) or a strategically placed splash of color are painstakingly arranged underneath the transparency. These works, which one might dismiss as simple copies , are much more complex than those unfamiliar with the world of xerography might imagine. It takes a certain skill to slowly drag an image across a machine to achieve the beautiful and haunting distortion St.Lewis seeks. There is purpose to these collages, emotion and ideas are subtly conveyed using the products of modern technology.
In The Angel of History, St.Lewis xerographically widens and blurs an outline of an angel. Underneath this acetate angel, one can faintly see gondolas floating down the waterways of Venice. The subtlety of the scene beneath the angel – the calm, slow passage of the gondola- suggests the slow, subtle passage of time.
In Madonna of the Night Wing, the acetate image is a standard Renaissance Madonna and Child. Underneath the Madonna’s face and hair is a detail of the white, tan and gray feathers of an owl’s wing. The feathers intensify a feeling of tenderness and wisdom.
The Kiss is a beautiful piece in which the frame and mounting of the work adds to its validity. The acetate collage itself is rather simple and small. A close-up of Cupid kissing Psyche, with simple yet vibrant colors underneath, fills a small oval frame. The frame is mounted in the center of a much larger rectangle covered in plush red suede. The brash, large border contrasts strongly with the tender image within the oval frame.
St.Lewis’ three dimensional assemblages are masterful fusions of classical images, plaster casts of body parts and various synthetic items. The greenish-gold tint to the “skin” heightens the sense of timelessness and classical beauty, and the tensions created by the strong design reveals much about St.Lewis and his perceptions.
In I Should Have Listened to Cocteau, plaster hands and arms shield a plaster face, crowned with plastic flowers, from flames cut from styrofoam in the background. The background is a slab of slate-gray styrofoam. The piece is based on an incident in which a Russsian ballet designer supposedly asked Cocteau and Picasso at a party ” If your house were on fire and you could only take one thing with you, what would you take?” Picasso answered ” The nearest thing to the door”, Cocteau answered “The Fire”.
Mars on the Tigres-Euphrates is St.Lewis’ commentary on U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The background, an American flag, is painted in muted tones. In a narrow doorway cut from the center, the figure of a man from the waist up hovers. Wooden straws poke through his cheeks and temple. Teeth are bared, glue dripping from the dentures like the heavy thick saliva of a rabid dog. The man, leaning over a young boy, looks like s subdued monster temporarily pressed into service as a guard; the boy lies on his back, kicking. Graffitti chalked on the flag – including the words ” Yankee go Home,” a partial map of Babylon, and a seraphim-makes tangible the hatred inhabitants of the Middle East feel for this symbol of American imperialism.
The Art Critic expresses the aggravation caused St.Lewis by his adversaries. In this assemblage, a minotaur butts its horned head into a gold frame. The plaster figure within the frame breaks into pieces, its body parts jumbled. A finger catches a tear. A dislocated arm covers the head. A brown eye stares from a nipple. The background of the painting is ablaze in orange and yellow.
While St.Lewis’s materials and sources are familiar- found objects, xerography, assemblage, mythology- his work is unique because of the witty and macabre, yet beautiful ways in which these elements are combined.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
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