Splitting Images
Three of Ken Warneke’s four paintings at Tough reminded me of Vertov’s ambition, though Warneke lacks Vertov’s optimistic view of human perfectibility. Each combines four fragments of a face–two eyes, a nose, and a mouth–isolated in circles or ovals or triangles and set against a prepainted abstract ground. None of the features is in quite the right position, and each is obviously a part of a different person. The odd tension between the features and the backgrounds, the photographic precision with which each face fragment is painted, and the mind’s natural tendency to try to unify the diverse facial types into a single visage are what make these paintings exciting.
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In the gentlest and most unified of the three paintings, an untitled piece from 1994, women’s features are set amid a multicolored field. Looking a bit like a wall with many layers of paint peeling off, this ground also resembles what could be an impressionist version of mist. There are patches of blue, gray, purple, and yellow, though the dominant color seems to be one or another pale flesh tone.
Then in 1991 both the galleries closed during the art market’s collapse, and Warneke found himself liberated from the “factory” of dealer and client expectations, such as requests for paintings to match colors of draperies or couches. He felt freer to experiment, to change styles.
Warneke implicitly acknowledges that these faces aren’t smoothly unified; a key influence, he says, is his fascination with several transvestites and their dual identities. Several years ago Warneke was suddenly surprised to see a man he’d known for ten years dressed as a woman. “And not only a woman,” says Warneke, “he was dressed as Heidi.” Warneke admits to not really understanding “Heidi”; s/he appears to him as a split personality. The splits in Warneke’s faces, at least at first glance, are akin to the dissonance that any viewer of our diverse culture might experience.
