'Out of the Frame' finds 3 artists leaping forth with ideas

"Heart and Soul" by Eric Painter.

Don’t get the wrong idea. When Miller Pipkin mentions matches and art in the same sentence, he’s not talking about burning down Marshall Arts Gallery, where he and two other artists – Steve Webb and Eric Painter – have a group show, “Out of the Frame.”

"Heart and Soul" by Eric Painter.

Rather, he has a special “Burning Man”-like gesture planned for Thursday’s opening reception.

Explains Pipkin: “Last semester at the South Main art walk, I did a phoenix which was made with around 15,000 matchsticks, and I lit it in the yard of Power House. And I felt like it would be a nice kind of closing ceremony for my show to have another burning piece.”

This time, Pipkin, a University of Memphis film production major and fine arts minor, chose an alchemy symbol for “alcohol and wine spirits,” he says, with the intended message to “be merry and enjoy yourself.”

The celebratory show — which runs through June 7 — plays off a number of ideas that link the three very different artists, who are related by family and friendship (Webb is Pipkin’s stepfather, while UofM graduate Painter has a campus studio space next to Pipkin’s).

The first is a coming-out — or a leaping out of the frame, if you will — of the artists. This is Pipkin’s first major show, while Webb’s last major show was in 1992. Tied to that notion is the generational scope of the artists — Pipkin is in his 20s while Webb and Painter are in their 50s — which gives the exhibit a sense not only of emerging talent but also of merging talent.

Furthermore, the exhibit title, “Out of the Frame,” implies a collective break from typical methods of making and presenting art, i.e., the frame of tradition. And to some extent, all three think outside of the box by fusing their painting and sculptural techniques to conceptualist gestures and presentation.

For example, Painter, who once studied with Houston artist Dick Turner, creates painting-sculptural hybrids he calls “paint-ures,” large, multimedia works like “Heart and Soul” that extend through a combination of welding and stretched canvas the finite frame into infinite space. The purpose, he says, is as much philosophical as aesthetic, a search for and representation of synergy between the spiritual and physical realms.

One particular theme shared by the artists is the idea of impermanence and how it can be conveyed in the perceived permanence of the physical arts. In Webb’s case, his approach of “urban architecture” recasts familiar and pre-existing images into suggestive new frames of reference. His work “Security,” for instance, plants a painted security door onto a flimsy, used drop cloth. The irony is immediate: in a post-9/11 world, even safety is a sprayed-on construct of the mind.

As for Pipkin, found objects and bricolage dominate much of his creative thinking and work.

“The majority of my surfaces are found objects,” says the film student, who has had cameos in such locally affiliated movies as “My Blueberry Nights” and “Black Snake Moan.” “And so the frame is eliminated in that the found object encompasses itself.”

In his almost illusory wax facemask, “Identification of the Shell,” which evokes the age-old practice of death masks, Pipkin seems to capture the evanescence of human experience, questioning at the same time the reality and authentication of that experience. It’s beautiful and unsettling all at once. It also suggests that the true frame is, and always has been, us.

“Out of the Frame”

A group exhibit of works by Eric Painter, Steve Webb and Miller Pipkin. On display at Marshall Arts Gallery, 639 Marshall, through June 7. An opening reception is 6:30-9 p.m. Thursday. For more info, call 258-7536.

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