photo by German Jimenez
At the reception for Robert Caban’s “Recent Paintings” exhibit Tuesday at the Tall Wall Space in the Arts and Communications Building, Caban spoke of becoming an artist. Caban received his master of fine arts degree from the Claremont Graduate University. “Flowers Always Win,” near the top of the north end of the Tall Wall Space, is one of six paintings in the exhibit.
Intriguing designs of flowers set the theme for the occasion as Robert Caban, a Los Angeles-based artist, was the guest of honor for an opening reception Tuesday of his exhibition titled “Recent Paintings” in the Tall Wall Space in the Art and Communications Building.
Art Department Manager Dion Johnson, who knew Caban from graduate school, and Ruth Trotter, professor of art, brought Caban’s work to the University of La Verne.
“It (brings) a refreshing surprise dichotomy to the building’s rectangular and cold architecture,” Johnson said.
And truly, hues of orange, pink, blue, brown and gold gave the Tall Wall Space a colorful touch.
“The compositions are asymmetrical and allude to almost constellation-like images in asymmetrical format – top-heavy and nontraditional,” Johnson said.
The biggest attraction was the white outline of a flower with a purposefully made correction gesture on top of brown, black and green strokes with miniature flowers and stars surrounding the painting.
“It has a wonderful combination of humor and pictorial intellect that I like,” Trotter said.
Douglas C. Bloom, an artist who showed on the Tall Wall Space two years ago, said that the white five-sided outline resembles a rounded star but our mind keeps telling us that it is a flower.
“Even though the small stars around it are saying that it’s a star and it’s drawing a connection between a star and a flower, we can’t change our brain,” Bloom said.
Caban followed the style of secular paintings in his painting titled “Tag.”
Gold strokes of different sizes and shapes flow across the canvas of the brownish tone red oxide.
A glossy gel adds a shimmering approach to the acrylic strokes of paint.
An orange splat of paint off to the left portrays a tag or contamination of the superfluous gold.
The Byzantine paintings with their abundant use of gold and mosaic configurations have been an inspiration for Caban’s “Tag” painting.
Caban creates an interesting texture by using trowels and spackling knives for painting.
“I use everything but a brush,” Caban said.
In his painting titled “Flowers Always Win (2)” Caban uses stencils and numerous colors to introduce an element of craft.
“I think they’re fresh,” Trotter said referring to Caban’s paintings.
To even out a color scheme in the smallest painting Caban “spilled” orange paint over his scheme of blue flowers.
Through this effect he obtained a balanced amount of orange and blue, which are opposite of each other on the color scheme, in an unordinary form.
In some sense, the orange is fighting to get on top of the blue.
“As you move around the painting you experience it in a different way,” said David Arnold, CAPA art major.
“There is not just one way to look it,” he added.
Christa Caban, the artist’s wife and a costume designer, said that she and Robert often inspire each other’s work.
“Sometimes he’ll take some of my finished sketches shrink them and put them in his painting,” Christa said.
In most of his paintings Caban applies abstract forms to ordinary objects such as flowers and trees.
“That’s sort of the philosophy behind it,” Robert Caban said. “Make it and see what happens.”
Originally, Robert Caban planned to be a marine biology major.
He discovered his passion and talent for painting at 19 when he took an art class in college.
Caban was drawn to art because it gave him the opportunity to set himself aside by creating something that has not been seen before. Caban’s pivotal point was when he won first place with his still life painting of an aloe vera plant.
Caban attended UC Santa Cruz for his undergraduate and Claremont Graduate University for his graduate studies.
He currently runs an art studio in El Segundo, Calif.
The exhibition on the Tall Wall Space is on display through Feb. 15, 2005.
Caban will give a talk from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 9 in the Tall Wall Space.
The exhibition and talk are open to the public and admission to each is free.
Yelena Ovcharenko can be reached at yovcharenko@ulv.edu.