Art Review: Anton Weiss' 'Remnants' sets objects, pigments in abstract harmony

"Remnants 003" by Anton Weiss is among eight works included in the exhibition "Remnants."

What better way for an artist to celebrate his 75th birthday than being interviewed on the radio and installing an exhibition of new works?

That's what transpired this week for Anton Weiss, the Nashville-based artist whose show "Remnants" opens tonight at L Ross Gallery with a reception from 6 to 8.

"Remnants" offers only eight works, but taken singly or collectively, they demonstrate the confidence, aplomb and ever-questioning nature of a master. Weiss, like local (and younger) artists Hamlett Dobbins, Pinkney Herbert and Dwayne Butcher, carries high the torch of abstraction, adhering to the tenet that a canvas or panel does not need to relate a narrative or represent a familiar form. Rather, in a distribution of pigment — in the case of Weiss, it's acrylic — gesture and technique based on thought and intuition, it holds the history and life of its own making.

Not just pigment, but objects. Seven of the works in "Remnants" illustrate the exhibition title by incorporating scraps of metal in a wide array of shards, splinters, particles and shreds that lend each piece a rigorous and elegant air of urban and postindustrial decay. This industrial feeling is reinforced by the riveted metal frames that enclose each piece and by the rivets and hammered aluminum that buttress the vertical edges in several of them.

While that description makes Weiss' recent work sound heavy and apocalyptic, like sci-fi décor out of "Blade Runner" or "The Book of Eli," there's a sense of levity too, a touch of Dada playfulness in the arrangement and relationship of the metal scraps, somewhat like Picabia's collages of delicate, absurd, cranky machinery.

Emphasizing the completely abstract nature of his endeavor, and allowing the works to speak for themselves, Weiss has not titled these "Remnants" pieces except for numbers; that is, "Remnants 001" through "Remnants 007." (The eighth entry in the exhibition is not part of the "Remnants" series; titled "Echo II," it could have been omitted to give the show ultimate coherence.)

In a way, the lack of title allows the abstract work of art and the viewer confronting it absolute freedom in a dependency that must be taken on faith and trust. If we are what we eat, are we not also what we see, and does the work of art not receive subtle alteration in its conspiracy with our eyes, emotions and imaginations?

A portion of that trust is the viewer's willingness to resist interpretation, and for his part Weiss provides plenty of textural and compositional satisfaction. Gazing closely at the "Remnants" pieces offers lessons in how to cover a flat surface with layers of paint, how to scrape and overpaint, how to give the impression of depth and detail.

This complicated palimpsest unfurls layers of feelings and worlds that in conjunction with the metal scraps and shards convey a sense of painterly hieroglyphs or runes, literally unreadable, perhaps, yet resonant, contemporary yet archaic.

Anton Weiss, 'Remnants'

At L Ross Gallery, 5040 Sanderlin, through April 30. Reception 6 to 8 p.m. tonight. Call 767-2200.

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