Michael Reafsnyder and David Kiddie

Combo Platter * collaborative works
Sept 10 - Oct 12, 2007

Michael Reafsnyder and David Kiddie: Double Platter

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "monster" as being a) An imaginary or legendary creature, such as a centaur or Harpy, that combines parts from various animal or human forms; and b) A creature having a strange or frightening appearance. And in searching for words to apply to the recent suite of collaborative works between painter Michael Reafsnyder and ceramicist David Kiddie, it just fits. And so although Cliff Benjamin (the owner and director of Western Project, Reafsnyder's primary dealer) laughed a bit nervously when I called the work monstrous right in front of the artist, he was moved to observe that "He's transformed the strengths of his painting into another medium without losing anything. They shouldn't work, but they do."

With titles like "Rococo-a-Go-Go", "Fab Nebula" and "Wiggle Room", the artists sound a light-hearted note that communicates the improvisational, jazzy experience of making the work. It was essentially an experiment after all; they did not intend to show it. Both accomplished artists already, they each yielded to the other's impulses with never an idea as to what would happen next, which makes discussing their intentions a bit tricky. As Reafsnyder puts it, "How can we tell people what the work is about when we don't really know ourselves?" But with each moment spent in the company of the ubiquitous, slightly irritating smiley faces that emerge from the riots of crevice and color, both celebrating and transcending the functionless majesty of the objects they adorn, the suspicion grows that something very serious is going on after all. Whether by accident or design, the fact remains that the work is compelling. Their improbable mass and the interplay between the mad rushes of color and the seductive contours of the clay are downright hypnotic.

In a real sense, the work is about its own conception; the platters exist as documentation of the situation inside the studio. They relate the story of artists operating outside their comfort zones. Reafsnyder's normally exuberant love of color, familiar to followers of his expressive abstract paintings, was both challenged and thwarted by the fact that he was using glazes that don't reveal their ultimate colors until after they are fired. For an artist who is so enamored of the ecstatic evocations and hypnotic dissonances that result from commingling pure pigments that he feels his own vision is subject to color's authority, this must really have been an adventure. Kiddie observed wryly, "Believe me, there were times that I wanted to grab the paint brush from Michael's hand and paint one of these things myself. I tried this once and soon realized that trying to emulate Michael isn't as easy as it might look. His movement with color is uniquely his signature, and can't be mimicked with much success."

The platters resemble baroque picture frames in a state of disrepair, with what at one time were smooth planes in the center intended for painting. Not that Reafsnyder has ever been interested in staying inside the lines. In forging large, rough-hewn and applique-studded surfaces for Reafsnyder to inform, Kiddie says he "wanted to suggest ornate preciousness so that Michael's painting would seem like a violation." No problem. With no compunctions save a deep appreciation for being let into a ceramicist's studio for a play date in the first place, Reafsnyder felt that it was "his job to damage the beauty of David's craft."

Early surrealist poets and artists captivated by the role of the accidental in the creative process often played a game they called Exquisite Corpse. Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase or draw an image on a sheet of paper, fold it over, and pass it on. It was not until the very end that the finished work was revealed, with unpredictable results that were often fractured but always mystical. The emphasis was on the experience, on the value to each player of relinquishing control not only to the other players, but more importantly to the untested waters of his own subconscious mind. Kiddie, who set this thing in motion, feels that "the finished works are things that we could never make on our own... Maybe two heads are better than one." Not a worrisome two-headed monster, though; they don't want to scare anyone.

--- Shana Nys Dambrot * Los Angeles, 2007