Andrew Catanese | These Fields Dream of Fire

Andrew’s second solo show with Johansson Projects includes gouache on paper, oil on canvas, and a repeat, generous invitation into the symbolic world of flora and fauna that colors their life.

This body of work specifically highlights the landscape of a chase that predates America. Andrew is grappling with a return to home and its attendant, yet unexpected re-enchantment. They provide us an intimate, almost voyeuristic entre to the interplay between hunter and hunted. Horses, hounds, foxes, and folk are all included in what presents as rich allegory, fable, and even fantasy of the American South.

Andrew paints their creatures flatly but as lovingly as a Morandi vessel, where instead of the illusion of volume, their color palate fills us with its rich psychic depth. In one example, In This Place My Head Is Always Spinning, But Not In A Bad Way, the title alludes to the feelings invoked from a dance of the canines linked together like flames on a prairie.
In other equine efforts like A Last Gasp of Winter and the Fog Will Rise, light is caught playing on their haunches while wisps of condensed water spring from the surrounding, loaded spaces.

Most works are paying attention to the ancillary characters of the chase. The gaze of these horses and hounds meet yours as if contributing to a conversation they have not been typically invited to join.
It may be because the humans seem consumed by their environment. Perhaps the typical tensions of our environmentally sobering news cycle have distracted them from engaging. They ponder vulnerably. Meanwhile, dogs are keen on a scent. Horses are freshly saddled, and the fox… well the fox’s thinking and the circumstances surrounding it may best be summed up by Andrew’s own statement about their work:

“In it, there is a magic; in the chase, we become a part of the ancient rites of nature we have sought so long to divide ourselves from. The terrible, violent beauty that exists everywhere, but which we rarely see. It permeates this land, guarding it against change. Guarded against good and bad. Not all cruelty is evil, but it doesn’t matter when you are the fox.”

In the end, does this ritual’s beauty spare it or do these fields succumb as in their dreams?

These Fields Dream of Fire runs through August 31 with an Opening Reception on July 27 from 3-5 and August 2 for First Friday

For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or [email protected]