"Trip"
Oil on canvas
48"x60"
www.kenney-mencher.com
Friday, March 09, 2007
Kenney Mencher
Posted by Dean at 9:02 AM
Labels: Kenney Mencher, oil, painting
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16 comments:
I love Mencher's paintings, they are like comic book images for adults. His rendering techniques continue to improve with each piece, and I get a great kick out of imagining the storyline for the scenes!
Compositionally, this piece works well. The eye travels easily over it and doesn't get stuck on any one section. It also has enough depth to avoid looking like cut and paste collage, the only flat part being the somewhat awkward "square" that frames the two men in the upper right side. This framed section provides the only catch-22 in the composition...it works to create visual interest as it draws the eye back and forth between the two sets of figures, but it also detracts from the very aptly rendered three-dimensional objects such as the car,train, and house.
The narrative in this piece lacks the sense of the sinister, noir, or self-aware present in Mencher's earlier works, and reads mostly on the surface. It's a painting for painting's sake, and that's a good thing.
This painting fascinates me in that I want to know the complete story! And while the subject matter is intriguing, it's also beautifully painted and a delight to look at. The lush colors and variety of textures - from rich flesh tones to soft fabric to the gleaming metal of the car and train - provide a delicious visual feast.
The other postings do a good job of indicating the technical awareness and ambition that went into this piece. It takes a lot of patience to overlap images like that and render them in oil.
To me this painting explores issues of time. The two guys are contextualized in what looks like present day S.F. and also are among an antique car and a locomotive, which read as of the past or historical. It seems like the positioning of the two figural scenes was done in a very calculated way.
Upon first seeing this my inital gut reaction was hey this seems in a weird way like a pretty hopeful painting, with some heavy helpings of glamour and hollywood romance.
I like the look of it; as Alicia said, you have a nice contrast between the metal and flesh tones. But Kenney, this is not one of my favorites. Usually, I have an easy time deriving a narrative from your work, and for me that 90% of the fun. (It's also a blast hearing my patients' theories on Fortune. They're twins! They're clones! They're medical students hoping for a good grade!) But not this one. This one baffles me.
To me, it suggested a Depression-era tale of a couple parting as one leaves their small town to seek fame and fortune in the Big City. The kiss is one of farewell, parting with the intent of return. Making them both men puts an interesting reframe on what might otherwise be a more or less standard Capra-esque (or Steinbeck-esque (Steinbeckian?)) tale. I liked it.
My take was that the image was something of a fantasy, some kind of daydream about someone well, not in San Fran. The older car evokes this nostalgia that I find interesting with the gay content of the painting. It reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting of the “good old days,” which is interesting with the subject matter because those times were perhaps less kind to the GLBT community.
Visually I like the color and firm, opaque, rich forms.
As for the collage, I’m trying to sort out if my ambivalence there is something from art class. I can see what Monkey was saying about the square but I wonder if that pushes the figures, cars, etc. below it forward. There’s a kind of gradual, inclined stacking of 5 or 6 planes (I like how this is mimicked in the smoke clouds), so I don’t think it bothers me in that sense but more as a symbol of collage.
It raises questions as to whether a painting needs to justify its medium, why the idea was executed as a painting and not a collage.
Well enough brainstorming from me, it's great to have your work posted here again Kenney. It's also nice to see new faces commenting here, hope you guys stick around!
I love this one! And not just because I'm a gearhead and love antique cars, but it's just such a "Feel-good" movie poster feel about it. Two brothers, the younger one who lives in a simpler world and is enjoyably naive, is excited about his first trans-American train ride. So overcome on the platform that he can't help but kiss his brother, who sheepishly, but lovingly returns it. Aw, it just makes me want to cry. I miss my brother!
You guys are good :)
I'm going to go with Dean's interpretation. Now I can begin to fashion a few stories of my own.
Now I wanna know more about Lyvvie's past if she thinks that they are two brothers. Sounds like a John Irving novel. I really appreciate all the great comments and ideas. I do wonder sometimes about the holding lines of the boxes around the forms. I'll try some different stuff in the future.
I like this painting in all technical/compositional respects. Like some of the others who've commented, I find the time dimension deeply ambiguous. The inset with one guy straightening the other guy's tie might be back in the past (the only means of expressing affection acceptable in the era of the Victorian cottages)? The kiss is today and occupies the foreground? O.K. But the car and the train are pretty retro, leaving only the Transamerica Building to span the intervening decades, which seems to be a bit of a jump and makes me doubt I'm making sense of this.
In any event, I think the inset is a very clever device for extending the narrative possibilities of a painting. I think you've used it very effectively, Ken, in "Little Did He Know" in the blog section on your website. In that painting the timescale is dramatically compressed relative to "Trip", so it delivers its punch immediately (usually a good thing).
http://www.kenney-mencher.com/catalog/blog/index.htm
It reminds me of Thomas Hart Benton, but polished, it's too done. The style looks commercial maybe because it is presented via the Internet, I am not able to see the painter's hand. It looks like an illustration not a painting, but then the subjects do not look like a run of the mill illustration. It comes across both confusing and a little funny. I feel too much is packed on to one canvas, but might translate very well as a mural. The subjects seem to expose themselves while the painter hides behind his great rendering talent.
Kenney's work continues to blow my mind. I love the direction he's going with these narrative devices, like panels from a comic book. This one in particular seems to be a big leap; rather than an isolated scene or series of scenes with a few players, we get a glimpse of other locations and settings that seem to span time and tell a more elaborate story. As always with Kenney's work, he gives you just enough setup to intrigue us and hint at a story, like disconnected stills from some old epic movie. He allows our imaginations to do the rest.
well i just love his work. the thing is i prefer the snapshots of life, i think is amazing how he can capture a moment and the human freaky nature. i'm not into this story painting, but that is just a personal choice, what this guy can do is just awesome.
This is beautiful.
I think that they are close, and one went away, and when he returned, they found the courage to express how they really feel for one another.
just terrific! thank you!
Hey chicklet! thanks for the link at BHD. If I remember right Kenney shows his work in your neck of the woods.
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