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JOHN LYNCH
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WARREN FRIEDMAN
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J
ohn Lynch’s surrealist paintings mesmerize the viewer as they bridge the gap between reality and illusion. In an otherwise natural landscape, Lynch paints a door floating in midair. In another painting, he paints several passageways. Both paintings invite the viewer not just to enter into another dimension but also to choose a fate. In this decision, the viewer consequently selects an interpretation of the painting.
Likewise, celestial bodies are a reoccurring motif in his work, sometimes even within a single painting. While the moon and the sun are works of nature, they suggest the otherworldly, particularly when their images replicate.
Perception, key both to the principles of psychology and to the design of paintings, takes on new meaning in his paintings. Unblemished horizons and checkered floors indicate his artistic and mathematical precision, yet his skewed logic hint at his studies in psychology. It is this predilection for science—he trained in radiologic technology before taking a job at The Arlington Hospital in Virginia—that propels him toward making compositions rife with symmetry, patterns, and symbols.
Inspired by literature, music, and philosophy, as much as science, Lynch’s paintings retain emotion and movement. While a gnarled tree may lend a very gothic aura to one painting, the next may feature more classical forms of the human body. Dark and bright colors alike make his oil paintings atmospheric.
Website: http://calgalonline.netfirms.com
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W
arren Friedman’s spare yet elegant montage photographs speak of links made across time and space, and people that somehow, in some way, reach out to one another, attempting to make connections. The themes of separation, brokenness, and potential reunification course throughout his art, and especially one of his more recent series, Broken Symmetry. In this group of works, Friedman pairs resonant images of various scenes in ways that resonate both formally and thematically. Placed against pewter-colored backgrounds, his photographic images create a space in which viewers can analyze different correspondences and begin to think through both visual and social givens. Images are at times cut out from their original locations and re-contextualized in a manner not dissimilar to the Russian Constructivists. A socially-minded artist, Friedman influenced by photographers such as Robert Frank and Dorothea Lange, works in a street-photography mode in order to capture the reality of everyday people’s lives.
Since his retirement, Warren has had the opportunity to develop his montage skills, creating more abstract montages that always relate back to the people and places around him. He is presently working on a project about a neighborhood art gallery and frame shop. He has also recently taken a few good shots of Katz’s Deli, part of his ongoing love for NYC’s public places. Committed to an art that has significance, Friedman stresses that he would like his work to “provide connections and contexts that help invest the visible with deeper meaning and put us more in touch with our surroundings.” His photography is both an art and an act of solidarity.
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