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Gallery Highlights

June 6 - July 12, 2003

Byron Roche Gallery
750 N Franklin St., Ste 105
Chicago, IL 60610
Tel. 312-654-0144
Hours 11a-6p Tue-Sat
http://www.byronroche.com

Scott Bullock makes a welcome return to Byron Roche Gallery for the first time since 1999. Nine new works in a variety of media show the artist's skill in his anatomical assemblages, which evoke dramatic energy and a rightness of cipher. We may not realize it, but we are all made of such 'stuff.'

These male and female torsos dance with graceful celebration of life despite being constructions, hollowed, with prostheses cobbled of wood, armor, wire, brick. They may be weathered, but they are not beaten. The figure in Coming Home (watercolor on paper: 30" x 22": 2002) strides forward in what might equally be crossing the finish line, or an exuberant return to a place of the heart; its scoured torso bound together with ropes and leather bands, but trailing the keys to all doors. In Anatomy of a Dream (oil on canvas: 51-1/2" x 48-1/2": 2003) the body, thrown back, lifts its arms in a powerfully hieratic gesture. The feel of ritual is heightened by the drapery, its flow balancing the tensely-held pose.

Construction of Touching Grace (graphite and ink on paper: 24" x 29": 2002) with its four progressive line drawings, is an Escherian transformation of hand into cipher, as well as a glimpse into the artist's working methods. As can be seen in Touching Grace (watercolor on paper: 15" x 22": 2002) itself, the artist further interpolates while creating the final work, here adding thickness and character to the thumb, subtleties of personality to the fingers. All Roads Lead Here (acrylic on canvas: 48" x 48": 2002) departs into still life with its abandoned alley door draped with rope, cord and wire. What would seem to be unrelated to the artist's inventive torsos is really a reversal, a 'negative' in a photographic sense. The 'source materials' are not arms and legs, but represented in their proper places; the human presence is concealed, but suggested by the setting of door, brick, stoop: Bullock's vision seen inside out.

This artist's living bodies of flotsam and jetsam evoke a joyful movement, both in their poses and in the hidden meaning of the discarded materials of which they are composed. Imaginative, figurative, surreal, fantastical, and... a delight. Scott Bullock: New Work will be at Byron Roche Gallery through July 12, 2003.

Scott Bullock's previous exhibition at Byron Roche Gallery was reviewed by ArtScope.net in July 1999 (http://www.artscope.net/VAREVIEWS/Bullock0799.html).

--Katherine Rook Lieber

Katherine Rook Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual and Performing Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.