Art review: Gabe Fernandez’ ‘Liminal Space’

Story and Photographs by K.B. DIXON

Gabe Fernandez’ new show at Russo Lee Gallery is titled “Liminal Space.” It is, as the title suggests, a show focused on the complex strangeness of quiet spaces—in this case, on the quiet spaces of the urban landscape. A photorealist who insists on the option to improvise, Fernandez tilts his work toward the minimal. Focused on the play of light and shadow, it is a mix of inclinations, inspirations, and influences.

His subjects range from the existential austerity of derelict gas stations and empty evening streets to the radiant mundanity of ketchup bottles and paper coffee cups. These subjects are not approached with swashbuckling gestures, but with the sort of meticulousness you would hope for in a heart surgeon. He scrapes his scenes clean of the bits and bobs that might mess with mood, leaving only the details that matter. One of the most upright of painters, he is attracted to the geometric forms rather than the biomorphic. He seems never to have met a perpendicular he didn’t like—and then, of course, there are the chairs.

Chairs are to Fernandez what six-toed cats were to Ernest Hemingway—an obsession. They are the central motif of his oeuvre. He has been painting them for years. With their arms and legs they serve as stand-ins (or should I say “sit-ins”) for the human form, isolated or arranged in anthropomorphized poses with others: He is fascinated by their ability to suggest stories. One of the largest paintings in the show, The Old Apartment, features a tight troupe of chrome-legged chairs crowding through a doorway—the leader and the led. One of the moodiest is Lafayette—two chairs sitting askew beneath a distant window, the whole piece washed in a monochromatic melancholy that feels almost penal.

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Fernandez’s influences are many and varied. Some are more obvious than others—like Edward Hopper and David Hockney. His painting Red Doors, a night-time view of an empty lamp-lit street, seems distantly reminiscent of Hopper’s famous Nighthawks with its muted pallet and empty angst. Pink Wall, a collection of shadows and window-lit rectangles, seems almost a template for any number of Hopper hotel rooms (Rooms By The Sea, Sun In An Empty Room). As for David Hockney, who can see a swimming pool without thinking of him? Fernandez’s Pink Slide #2 feels like a direct descendent.

Influences can be found not just in the artist’s approach, but in his titles. There is Ruscha, for instance—a dilapidated gas station with a prominent island canopy echoing painter Edward Ruscha’s famous Standard Station—and a drab bathroom stall, complete with urinal, titled Duchamp (R. Mutt), a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s infamous readymade.

“Liminal” is one of the art world’s buzziest buzzwords. It has been used so promiscuously as to be rendered meaningless, but it is not meaningless here. The space Fernandez refers to as “liminal” is a psychological space as much as it is a physical one. It is about the transitions between states of mind—between canny and uncanny, between the ordinary beauty of the everyday and the bewildering strangeness of it. His work is emphatically legible. His strong, graphic lines define one side of the perceptual puzzle, a mysterious negative space the other. The viewer travels back and forth between these boundaries—between  ennui and intrigue—to arrive at what is ultimately a bespoke response, a distinctly personal appreciation.

***

Russo Lee Gallery

• Gabe Fernandez, “Liminal Space”
• On View: April 4—27, 2024
• Artist Talk: April 13, 11 a.m.
• 805 NW 21^st Ave., Portland