Owen Gray’s Beguiling ‘View of the World’ Doesn’t Seem To Extend to Modern Life

The painter Owen Gray, whose thirteenth solo exhibition recently opened at Blue Mountain Gallery, is, by any measure, an odd duck. His work, the most recent examples of which are displayed under the rubric “Interior Exterior View of the World,” is remarkable for many things, not least among them a notable absence of contemporary life. Though his landscapes are dotted, here and there, with what appears to be the ephemera of consumer culture, Mr. Gray’s universe is, if not pre-industrial, then far afield from the vagaries of the here-and-now. Just when do these dioramas take place? A strain of melancholy filters through Mr. Gray’s art, suggesting that his pictures of swampland capture moments seen in retrospect and, perhaps, in mourning. A trip to The Everglades three decades ago left a keen impression, and the artist’s subsequent fascination with the natural world has been bolstered by return sojourns to Florida, as well as repeated trips to The Bronx Zoo and The American Museum of Natural History. Is it too much to wonder if the latter two institutions, with their emphasis on conservation and cataloguing, account for Mr. Gray’s dedicated sense of remove?The paintings are modest and often small in size; the scale of the imagery is various and sometimes counterintuitive. A picture that measures a few inches in either direction can contain an encompassing vista, as is the case with “Gathering Storm” (2025). A larger picture — say, “Snakes and Reptiles” (2024), which comes in around two-by-three feet — offers a closer purview. In it, Mr. Gray places us less than an arm’s length away from the title creatures, a bug or two, printed matter, and a murky body of water. We hover above this scene seemingly impervious to gravity.‘Patient Tiger,’ by Owen Gray, 2024. Via Blue Mountain gallery and the artistThese are prospects abundant with incident, though the items in them aren’t always clear in definition. Mr. Gray’s touch is roughhewn but gentle, and more taken with painterly suggestion than high definition. In terms of scale, the compositions are often irrational. The title animal in “Patient Tiger” (2024) isn’t much bigger than a common turtle. In another picture, a dour mask-like face floats alongside a bevy of lady bugs, beetles and snakes. “Everglades Afternoon” (2024) appears relatively straightforward until one espies a morose nude tucked away in the foreground. This figure isn’t lost in Eden so much as consigned to it.Mr. Gray’s paintings skirt the surreal, but their tone is stony and even. The ickier fripperies of the unconscious mind are of less concern than duty paid to the variegated character of the natural world. The pictures bear some relation to religious art, particularly in their austerity of mood and encompassing, if sometimes bilious, sense of light. The rhythms recall El Greco; the specificity of symbol, Hieronymus Bosch; and an omnipresent sense of burden, Albert Pinkham Ryder. In Mr. Gray’s hands, the Peaceable Kingdom and the end of days achieve an uneasy detente.All of which is put into motion by a touch that is lightly applied, but never glib or automatic. Mr. Gray works on panel, a substrate whose density and firmness pushes back at the artist’s hand. This resistance allows the application of oils to retain a fetching integrity; every slur, scuff and scumble is studiously accounted for and never without purpose. If an artist’s responsibility is to bring credence, clarity and focus to an invented world, Mr. Gray accomplishes this task with uncanny consistency. His eccentric and implacable cosmos makes West Chelsea a destination worth exploring.

Owen Gray’s Beguiling ‘View of the World’ Doesn’t Seem To Extend to Modern Life

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