Alex Michon goes ‘eye-sight’ seeing, getting close to some canvases which on close inspection reveal a magical painterly alchemy.
Visiting the Joseph Yaeger exhibition was a timely reminder about how paintings should be seen up close, in reality, and not just experienced in digital reproduction. His show at The Perimeter was a revelation, since being in front of them and seeing the way the paint was applied created a completely different reading from an initial view of the images online.
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From those digital glances the paintings appeared to be very photo-realistic, kind of old school ‘proper painting’ which I found a bit meh! But when standing in front of them I discovered a curious incongruous messiness, a blurry ricky-tickiness which my painter friend explained was known in the vernacular as ‘painterly’. They were nothing short of magical. Some strange sloppy alchemy was at play, so that if you stood further away they seemed to hyper-realistic and intricately painted, while in close-up they revealed themselves to have a strange sort of splodgy unfinishedness which nevertheless made up a composite whole. What read as a shadow on a face when viewed a few meters away, up close was nothing short of a thin daub! They reminded me of standing up close to some of Goya’s paintings where a hand would appear as a kind of sketchy afterthought but when viewed from a distance was a perfectly acceptable rendition of a hand.
Yaeger is obviously a highly accomplished painter, but the paintings show that he treats accomplishment with the disdain it deserves. His paintings achieve their power by what seems like any means necessary. It reminded me of a Joan Didion quote where when describing her writing style, she said ‘Grammar is a piano I play by ear’. Yaeger appears to paint by instinct, with ‘appears’ being the operative word as there is obviously a sure tried and tested technique here.
Now this is not some kind of luddite call to arms for technical perfection and I cannot remember any other exhibition which has left me waxing so lyrical about the artist’s painterly methods (save perhaps for the aforementioned Goya) but here the magical mash up between subject matter and application gelled into a kind of road to Damascus moment of the joy of looking.
The title of the exhibition Time Weft hinted at some kind of temporal intention, yet the paintings’ narratives seemed disjointed, snatched glimpses from moments which had some kind of untold relevance. The artist states that ‘The imagery I use is a protracted search to better understand myself; playing or putting on roles that might clarify an interior that is sort of naturally hidden, even from myself.‘ There is certainly an element of filmic masquerading going on in the painting of a woman shielding her eyes, a man peering through oversized glasses, a hand holding out a pill.
Didion, whose works I had been discussing with my friend on our way to the show, cast a ghostly shadow over my reading of the images. There was an undefinable just out of reach Americana quality to the paintings (Yaeger is American) and like Didion’s prose they seemed coolly detached whilst at the same time emotionally resonant.
Yaeger, I found on further research, is being touted as a new art star in the art firmament. No matter, the paintings are a joy to behold, stories which need to be seen viscerally from the distance of a few inches back and then studied again to appreciate their subtle sleight of hand enchantments.
Alex Michon
Joseph Yeager: Time Weft
The Perimeter
London
Until 18 February 2023
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