Art Map Burlington Article

REVIEW

Erik Rehman at Frog Hollow

Artist Erik Rehman’s drawing and sculpture exhibition at Frog Hollow is bathed in the sunlight of the generous east-facing picture windows in the front of the Church Street Marketplace store and gallery. A graduate of Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art, Rehman teaches and works out of the Living/Learning Pottery Co-operative at the University of Vermont.

Rehman’s smaller-format sculpture might be familiar to Frog Hollow shoppers. His “Rootstones” series is a good example. Egg-shaped or oviform, they seem to concern emergence and nascent growth. In this, his pottery seems essentially hopeful--even generative. This month’s drawing exhibition reveals another side of Rehman’s aesthetic. While some examples of his sculpture literally underline his drawings, the eight smaller and one large charcoal and graphite on paper works dominate the space.

An untitled smaller drawing (12” x 16”, ink and graphite on paper) is almost bleak in its dark matrilocal composition. A female figure stares into an inauspiciously inky black sky surrounded by distressed, confused smaller figures. These subordinate subjects overlap each other into palimpsest; faces stacked atop one another in a chaotic jumble. To their left, a watertower looms like an onion-dome. The effect is that of a Russian Orthodox ikon seen through a Munch or Chagallesque glass darkly.

A lonely and distant church stands below a sharp crescent moon in another untitled piece (12” x 16”, ink and graphite on paper). An inky outer dark closes in on an overlapping legion of figures. Each subject has within it faces smiling, skeptical or reassuring within their larger individual frame. A bald man with a neck that could also be a gaping fanged mouth stands beside a smaller figure comforting another. In this, as in all Rehman’s work on display, a dark consciousness vies with an undercurrent of nurturing and mothering.

LEE T. FREEMAN

		MAY 2008 V.3-N.5
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Untitled drawing by Erik Rehman 16. Frog Hollow Vermont State Craft Center 85 Church Street (802) 863-6458 www.froghollow.org		REVIEW Erik Rehman at Frog Hollow Artist Erik Rehman’s drawing and sculpture exhibition at Frog Hollow is bathed in the sunlight of the generous east-facing picture windows in the front of the Church Street Marketplace store and gallery. A graduate of Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art, Rehman teaches and works out of the Living/Learning Pottery Co-operative at the University of Vermont. Rehman’s smaller-format sculpture might be familiar to Frog Hollow shoppers. His “Rootstones” series is a good example. Egg-shaped or oviform, they seem to concern emergence and nascent growth. In this, his pottery seems essentially hopeful--even generative. This month’s drawing exhibition reveals another side of Rehman’s aesthetic. While some examples of his sculpture literally underline his drawings, the eight smaller and one large charcoal and graphite on paper works dominate the space. An untitled smaller drawing (12” x 16”, ink and graphite on paper) is almost bleak in its dark matrilocal composition. A female figure stares into an inauspiciously inky black sky surrounded by distressed, confused smaller figures. These subordinate subjects overlap each other into palimpsest; faces stacked atop one another in a chaotic jumble. To their left, a watertower looms like an onion-dome. The effect is that of a Russian Orthodox ikon seen through a Munch or Chagallesque glass darkly. A lonely and distant church stands below a sharp crescent moon in another untitled piece (12” x 16”, ink and graphite on paper). An inky outer dark closes in on an overlapping legion of figures. Each subject has within it faces smiling, skeptical or reassuring within their larger individual frame. A bald man with a neck that could also be a gaping fanged mouth stands beside a smaller figure comforting another. In this, as in all Rehman’s work on display, a dark consciousness vies with an undercurrent of nurturing and mothering. LEE T. FREEMAN

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