By Kathryn Crohn
According to Adolf Gottlieb and Mark Rothko, “Art is an adventure into the unknown world which can be explored only by those willing to take risks." And so by this examination, the New York art scene will once again find itself thrust into a visual risk, a monsoon of color and message generated by Jeffrey Shurdut, abstract painter and visual storyteller. In regard to his March East Village show, Shurdut's followers may notice a thematic sequel of sorts. Perhaps drawing from last year’s poignant, not to mention, wildly successful Chelsea shows entitled “Prisoner of Hope," Shurdut takes his observers on a visual tour of “The American Dream. “Although recent admirers may find his show's subject matter to be somewhat of an irony considering the surge of patriotism following the events of September 11, those who have followed Shurdut through the past 3 years have come to depend on Shurdut's visual stories of Americans in “manic America."
Shurdut's paintings attempt to study the American individual's evolving definition of “The American Dream." This observer noticed that Shurdut's series of paintings appear to be going through developmental phases, if you will. Beginning the series, Shurdut's use of primary colors and deliberate yet carefree brush strokes tell his audience of the American child's innocence and simplistic desires, universal in nature and recognizably not just “American." Shurdut continues to tell his audience a story with haunting eyes and affected mouths, however Shurdut's children appear to be a product of a much lighter touch.
The story grows and “develops" into what appears to be the voice of the “young American" beginning to question and rebel against pre- conceived ideas of the American Dream, perhaps passed down to him from society, family, and nation. Appearing to sequel the movements and message from his “Prisoner of Hope" collection, Shurdut's visual struggle is clearly his own as we recognize the thickly placed words, and certainly the red stripes in which brush stroke and smearing intercede. The observer may find this piece as making a visually loud, nearly deafening statement.
The third and fourth “phases" of Shurdut's American Dream series seem to be the story of the American Adult. Shurdut begins his chapter of young adulthood with a house, perhaps a couple’s first home, angular and definite in stroke, but possibly weak in structure. One may have wondered if it was old and refurbished. It delivers a message of American children's inheritance. Despite Shurdut's affection for using loud colors, he chooses to tread softly in coloring the concept of the house. Except for the dark sky and blackened sun, the colors are pale and faded much like many of our dreams. Alas Shurdut’s picket fence, rickety and neither white nor off white. Shurdut has mixed a “new" color by which this landscape of Americana is protected and lies behind, a burnt out lawn struggling to support our painted fence in the shade of a failed or triumphant battle scarred dirty white.
Shifting one's eye to the fourth and final piece in Shurdut's American Dream, it becomes obvious that his house serves to foreshadow what is to become of the young American. The viewers are first accosted by Shurdut's scribbled prescription, “one tablet at bedtime, one in the morning" and by his multi-colored “schizophrenia."
Art house theoreticians frequently use the term “derivative" in describing the faux artist. Shurdut's work and message are far from faux. In fact, Shurdut's work is painfully real as this series continues his tradition of dissecting Americana through visual abstraction. Although not derivative, one welcomes the influences of DeKooning, Johns, Hockney, Hopper, Appel, Goya, Dubuffet, and Cullberg in Shurdut's work. With each season that passes, Shurdut arrests those who dare to cross his visual boundaries. Shurdut has been called an intellectual provocateur. I will add something to that. Shurdut is an intellectual paradox. He is provocative because the visual chaos of his work tells us the truth, the raw and real truth.
Spring/2002 Art Now Greenwich Village, NYC
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