"At first glance, the canvases in Peace Fellow depict familiar scenes: a grove of birch trees on a wind-swept bluff, a row of palm trees basking in the glow of sunset, and a sun-dappled path in an old-growth forest. The longer you look (and the closer you get), these familiar images begin to disintegrate and collapse in on themselves, giving way to patterns, scrapes, impasto dots, swipes, and washes - a micro-universe of colors."
"The largest painting in this show, Forest, stretches across three large canvases, with a camouflaged great grey owl flanked on either side by outstretched branches. Aptly known as the spectral owl or phantom of the north, this bird haunts its viewers' periphery, darting in and out of the line of sight before sneaking back into its habitat and/or monochrome ground."
Peace Fellow features new landscape paintings by Los Angeles–based artist Ross Caliendo that use a conventional genre to interrogate visual perception and optics. Americana-kitsch motifs—such as a bald eagle and palm trees—provide an initial sense of familiarity that conceals radical picture-making. From a distance canvases resolve into recognizable scenes: birch groves, palm rows, sun-dappled forest paths; up close these images disintegrate into patterns, scrapes, impasto dots, swipes, and washes that form a micro-universe of color. The triptych Forest centers a camouflaged great grey owl whose appearance and disappearance emphasizes natural camouflage and the illusory mechanics of seeing.
Read at Juxtapoz
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