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Voyage II
1996
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The Painter and His Muse
1996
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Trevor Winkfield's hard-edge images painted in flat, bold colors are fragmented narratives. These enigmatic, rebus-like works seem to insist on telling a story in a personal language that remains largely indicipherable, even after countless viewings. In his work, the English artist synthesizes Victorian-era children's book illustrations, proto-Surrealist writings by Raymond Roussel (Winkfield edited a recently published anthology of the French author's work), and Cubist spaces squeezed through what might be called a Pop art filter.
Among the seven large paintings on view in this show, The Painter and His Muse could be a self-portrait. Here, a cigar-smoking artist is shown painting a small canvas of an abstracted sailboat. He paints from a model sailboat, which is held in the hands of a figure that appears to be a wind-up toy. In Voyage II, a figure with a classical head and a lower body shaped like a harp seems to pull on a string tied to an abstracted and splintered sailboat. A sea gull flies overhead as does a triangular yellow flag fixed to the top of the mast. This work might be seen as a metaphor for Winkfield's project as a whole -- a journey to a strange, exotic and hitherto uncharted place.
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