Hank Virgona / "Life Looking at Life"
An appreciation by J. Stefan-ColeTo those of us familiar with Hank Virgona's still life paintings, wehre simple objects take on personalities, like characters on a two-dimensional stage, his recent collages offer a new insight into the artist's world. The materials are much the same, mixed media from charcoal, acrylic to gouache, ink and now pitch perfect snippets of paper.
Virgona's ordinary objects still converse: short and stout, tall and long, in gaggles or solitary bottles, jugs, ewers and ink pots, forks and spoons in an uneasy alliance. Now through, the dimensions are flatter, and the surfaces reduced to a kind of encoded conversation. Sentence fragments, soupcons of dialogue, are a new twist. They tease or drop clues: "P mand ing Guests" or , "start your," while one collage depicts guitar strings and a fret with the words, "head into high country," dancing across the surface. Single letters play here and there without ever separating from the harmonious subtlety of the whole. In the first grouping the collages are quite small, five by seven inches or so, yet for all their intimate size they remain utterly full and complete. If William Black saw the world in a grain of sand, Virgona has captured it in richly toned, diminutive works textured with bits of colored paper in a delicate balance.
A second group of works of paper is larger, and here Virgona has done something unique with space. I would call this group, "The Books"; the ink pots are there, some with cut outs of NASDAQ listings like a wallpapered background for artist and cultural references--books with imaginary titles, a miniature Statue of Liberty-that can be playful or at the same time seem menacing, the piece with the word Max in it, for example. Colors in this group are brighter, with lots of reds in warm wine shades but also those that veer toward a bold Pompeian red. One I call, "N.Y. Times - axes," contains an ink pot and a large book that opens to reveal a lush image of fabric that seems to fold, pulling the external space inside itself. I thought of the White Rabbit and Alice following him, hints of a world underneath, or an object, like a book, that moves beyond itself to permit us, perhaps, a peek of the world from its perspective.
Virgona's studio slips in here and there, part of a chair, the corner of a worktable, providing a glance into the artist's inner sanctum. Some of the book pieces contain blue paper patches that are reminiscent of Matisse's final collages. Looking at this second grouping I had the feeling of life looking at life; still life a la Joseph Cornell. Caught in the minutia of the everyday is the suggestion of the universe beyond, huge yet contained. This is a more sensuous and mysterious dialogue; a book partially opened, a glimpse of fabric, a social icon; Lady Liberty, mutual funds, the word "Moir" on a book cover. Like Kurt Schwitter's collages, Virgona takes the insignificant and lures from it the profound.
J.Stefan-Cole is books editor for the web journal, FREEwilliamsburg.com.