9/21: More Than Landscape

On September 10th, the Ulrich opened their Project Series with the painter Anne Appleby. Hosted in the small Amsden Gallery on the second floor, the show serves an abstract counter-point to the larger photographic show, Terry Evans: Matfield Green Stories.

Anne Appleby’s work consists of multiple color field paintings presented in tight-knit groupings. The titles clearly explain the color choices. Works like Salmon Pea are made up of four equal square canvases, hung close together in a grid, so that they are read as one piece. As one might expect, Salmon Pea is three canvases of different green hues accentuated by one pink canvas.

Her titles are a limiting factor because they ultimately dictate what we see and how we associate with the colors. As a result, her work begins to feel like Martha Stewart paint samples of nature, rather than the cycles of life they purport to connect to. Titles like these take out all the mystery– and, for this critic, all the enjoyment out of color field paintings.

Perhaps the Project Series is successful in its attempt to give an abstract take on the landscape, but the heavy-handed titles make this connection the only possibility. So, what do salmon or peas have to do the landscape? What is the relationship explored here? For that matter, what do they have to do with each other? These aspects go unresolved, making the landscape theme now feel like a thin veil, as if abstract art needs to be legitimized through nature.

Being connected with your environment is not a bad thing. But contemporary art presented in Wichita should be about more than just the landscape.

Ulrich Project Series: Anne Appleby is on view at the Ulrich Museum September 10 –November 27, 2011