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“If you could get rid —Jelaluddin Rumi, |
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Unquestionably familiar and yet insistently enigmatic, John Kollig's works ruminate quietly upon man's existence. Kollig's visual language does not portray an exact physical reality, but rather intimates an unseen metaphysical realm through basic forms. While Kollig's imagery is deeply personal, its visual simplicity is open to a variety of interpretations. One might recall Umberto Eco's concept of the “open work,” which suggests that rather than attaching itself to specific meaning, a work evolves through the diverse interpretations of its audience. Kollig's works are infinite reservoirs for the meditations of artist and viewer alike.
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Kollig recalls in his work the Sufi path toward enlightenment: An unveiling of barriers awakens one to the omnipresence of the divine, a being whose singular reality supersedes the rampant artificiality of the phenomenal world. The spherical form reoccurs throughout Kollig's work and serves as a reminder of the ideal unity of the self with the dcivine other. The inclusiveness of the divine is suggested through the simple extenrior of the sphere, which bears the potential to contain any geometrical shape within its imperceptible core. Kollig introduced his Sphereworks series in 1995 with a painting aptly titled The Journey Begins, in which the sphere that floats above a broad path, beckoning the viewer to embark upon an intellectual and transformational journey. With this departure, Kollig commenced upon an odyssey of stylistic development that continues today and draws from a diverse expanse of influences, including Moreau, Klimt, Frankenthaler and Auerbach. Both opacity and transparency are found in Kollig's painterly application of the medium, creating a complex and intriguing surface structure. Kollig's sophisticated narratives are similarly absorbing, as they combine eastern mystical thought with western visual expression and provide a cultural bridge that is precisely relevant for our times.
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Beginning in 2001, the Knights Templar series introduces more delineated architectural spaces and builds upon Kollig's interest in the portal. Knights Templar interweaves specific visual elements and histories, among them the Gothic arches of the Chartres cathedral, the era of King Arthur's court, Medieval alchemy, the axis mundi and veiled sacred allegory, which Kollig recombines with muted washes of color and metallic hues to create an evocative, dreamlike habitat. Clusters of seemingly connected doorways suggest the flattened, winding cityscapes common to Italian Byzantine painting. However, the portals that float across Kollig's surfaces are devoid of inhabitants and allude to a fantastical world beyond their thresholds. These images resist comprehension as logical space; frontal views of the architecture overlay distorted side and aerial perspectives, and the spheric shape reappears as a hovering mass. The provocative aesthetics of these new works display Kollig's profound commitment to visual integrity and predict an exciting course of evolution for his artistic practice, an adventure which the viewer is compelled to follow.
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Sphereworks XII, Fana, 2001, oil on board, 48 × 48 inches
Kara Vander Weg is a Curatorial Assistant at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. She has contributed to a number of publications, most recently the exhibition catalogue Frank Gehry: Architect (Guggenhiem Museum, New York, 2001) and Gentleman's Quarterly magazine.
Knights Templar/Tarot series
Painter changes focus to mythical male figures
By Jeff Abshear
Special to the Kalamazoo Gazette — Sunday, September 24, 2006
People who know the work of local artist John Kollig might be surprised by his new exhibition at Gallery 344. Kollig is known for his abstract paintings and particularly his Sphere Works, a series of nonobjective drawings and oil paintings that he has developed over the past 15 years. A prolific and consistently interesting painter, Kollig explores in these works the dynamic presence of carefully rendered sphere shapes in an unlimited number of environments — slathered paint, finely articulated charcoal and colored-pencil grounds, and vibrant fields
of color.
With this new work, Kollig takes a sharp detour. He has included the male figure.
It's no surprise that this primarily abstract artist is an extraordinary draftsman of the human form. In fact, Kollig, who trained with figurative artist Rick Rodriguez in San Francisco and has
a master's degree in fine arts from Western Michigan University, has never been far away from representation.
Even his abstract works are rendered three-dimensionally. His spheres float in ethereal space. Pyramids and other geometric forms jut out of the picture plane, appearing as lit structures from a bird's-eye point of view.
There also has been a thread of mysticism and spirituality in Kollig's work. Like the lyrical paintings of the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, Kollig's abstract spheres and crystalline structures hint at layers of symbolic meaning and seem to embody spirit. His interest in eastern philosophy, medieval Christian theology, pagan legend, Sufism and the mythological writings of Joseph Campbell has always been vaguely hinted at in his work. In this new series of figurative paintings and drawings, this mysticism comes to the forefront.
The Knights Templar/Tarot series began as figurative studies of young men. Kollig supplied his local male models with props, hats and costumes, then photographed them and drew and painted from the photos. But these paintings are not photorealistic. Kollig is more interested in the process of painting and the materials. As in his abstract work, the surfaces are built with washes, gestures and rich layers of color.
As these studies developed, Kollig's young knights transformed symbolically into mythological figures and some of the classic characters from the Tarot deck — “The Magician,” “The Ace of Cups,” “The High Priest.”
In “The Sun/Moon,” a figure is centered between symbols for the sun and moon. A pattern of hatched lines runs between these celestial bodies to pass through a pentagram on the figure's forehead and is triangulated with a point in the center of his chest. A band of armored knights on horseback marches across the bottom of the image.
In “Parzival,” a profile head wearing a helmet studded with gem shapes is surrounded by a swirl of circular bands, suggesting a cosmology of consciousness and reminiscent of Kollig's signature spheres.
“Two of Pentacles” shows the figure again wearing a soft headdress. A revolving sphere shape is centered over the ear. The figure holds a pentagram encircled with cryptic symbols that are, on close examination, found to be freeform shapes reminiscent of Kollig's lighthearted abstract expressionist gestures, rather than hieroglyphic pictographs. Another hatched triangle connects the figure's forehead and chest to a second pentagram, centered over a poem Kollig wrote years ago to a person he loved, transcribed into code.
The Warrior, oil on canvas, 20 × 20 inches
In most of the images, the figure wears a hat or has a diagrammatic shape centered over his forehead. In “The Warrior,” the adornment of the model's helmet radiates out from the center of his brow like a constellation of glowing orbs. In “Three of Swords,” a soft light floods across the chest of a crowned model as he shuffles through a deck of Tarot cards.
The Grail Messenger, oil on canvas, 20 × 20 inches
The strangest and most mysterious figure of the group, “The Grail Messenger,” emerges benevolently from a maelstrom of layered paint, flanked by two stately griffins. This painting, which was created several years before the series of figurative work was conceived, acted for Kollig as an oracle that prophesied the development of his inspiration to pursue the later subjects.
If there is a fault in this new work, it is that it wears its highly charged content a little too much on its sleeve. Many people prefer their mysticism to remain a mystery, and Kollig's outpouring of metaphysical enthusiasm might make some people uncomfortable, annoyed, or simply confused. But these new paintings and drawings are a natural extension of everything Kollig has done before, and display once again his development as one of the most talented and insightful artists in our community.