Web-posted Sunday, March 16, 2008

Art Beat: Bare bodies capture style, composition
By Hunter Ingalls
Column

"No nudes is good (nudes)" isn't the attitude at The 806, 2812 S.W. Sixth Ave., where Mardy Lemmons' paintings are up again.

Many of the images are familiar. Lemmons works slowly, carefully, exploring visual expression in relation to dualisms between body and mind.

Which may sound kind of high-falutin' for these gals offering peek-a-boos at normally out-of-bounds body parts, but there's more to the show than voyeurism. The images' possibly erotic content vies with various attitudes evident in the figures' heads and gestures.

Desperation, contentment, indifference, curiosity, looks that engage the viewer - sometimes in a challenging manner - plus appearances of complete internal absorption. These and other expressions of human consciousness appear in conjunction with completely or mostly bare bodies. Each figure has its own attitude.

Lemmons' imagery also embodies stylistic and compositional factors. For example, "Early Summer" is a spin-off from pop art, while "Green Rug" and "But I Love Him" may be seen as variants of expressionism. "White Nude" is a tightly compacted design, while "Pick Your Poison" is a sort of shambling assemblage of effects from a variety of styles.

"I.V." and "Male Torso" ostensibly involve male anatomy, but they're primarily about touch and tone - Lemmons' most recent avenue of exploration.

It's stimulating to see a show that provokes thought about the human condition. "I'm Here, Where Are You?", another painting's title, is the show's address to the prurient.

Hunter Ingalls held faculaty positions at the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D.