Art Review: Greely Myatt of Memphis takes his work to new heights

"Land," a wall sculpture of steel and beeswax by Greely Myatt, is the highlight of the artist's new exhibit.

Perhaps we have become too used to Greely Myatt. He's just so here, a euphemism for ubiquitous, as artist, as teacher, personality.

Last year the art community, the whole city in a sense, celebrated his 20th anniversary on the faculty in the art department at the University of Memphis and his influential presence. Myatt was the first artist, back in 1990 or '91, that I heard use the term "making art," as if the artist labored in a factory, putting together objects on an assembly line. Coincidentally, on a Charlie Rose program this week, a repeat of a series from last fall about the brain, sculptor Richard Serra, as it happens one of Myatt's idols, used the same phrase, "making art." Serra went on: "Inspiration is for amateurs. Making art is hard work."

Except that in his new exhibition, "Just Sayin'," at David Lusk Gallery through Oct. 1, Myatt makes it look so easy.

Myatt's corpus has consistently evoked a country-boy esthetic, with his rough light bulbs and ice cream cones hewed from wood and shaped from concrete, his colorful quilts fashioned from lozenges of wood, his gourds and broom handles and tin boxes. Yet such shenanigans concealed a deeply philosophical approach to creativity and art-making, balancing, with edge and verve, a wholesome reverence for popular culture with a greedy eye for the history of modern and contemporary American art. That poise, confident yet nervy, has never been more in evidence than in "Just Sayin'," which, despite its slangy title, is an exhibition of beguiling elegance.

One of Myatt's constant motifs has been communication between human beings, though he disguises that theme as a light and ongoing stream of references to comic strip humor by using primarily empty "thought-clouds" or "dialogue-bubbles" in myriad manifestations. One would not have thought that the artist could work further variations on this theme, of potent yet empty speech, but several of the works in "Just Sayin'" take the idea to new, almost transcendent heights.

Two refer specifically to well-known comic strips. "Untitled (Garfield page)" and "Untitled (Hagar page)" offer wall-mounted painted and polished steel squares and rectangles filled with empty dialogue-clouds inspired by pages from the well-known comic strips. We fill in the voids here — the artist says that another material in the composition is "air" — with our own imaginations, though the rigorous metallic arrangement and the unfilled spaces and bubbles suggest that the futility of engaging in conversation resembles a glittering, ghostly cocktail party, all sheen and refinement without substance, yet compellingly beautiful.

Our tangled and evanescent modes of communication are blown up to huge scale in "I like the way you dance," a vast floor sculpture in which expansive thought-clouds grow into and out of each other as if they represented a weblike nest of chatter and discourse of every nature, serious and frivolous, united in an improvised, fragile yet essential dance. Ever the scavenger, Myatt made this art from reclaimed steel pipes, metal and wood mop handles, plastic and — again, symbolizing the medium upon which sound travels — "air."

Not to overuse the word, but "elegant" is the proper adjective to apply to what might be the most beautiful piece of Myatt's career, the wall-sculpture "Land." Consisting of seven panels of beeswax mounted inside steel frames, the work implies its origin in dialogue-clouds at an almost abstract level; no actual "bubbles" are seen, only the curved, pointy indicators that show who is talking or thinking in a comic strip. The result is a piece that projects a sense of art deco sensuality and, yes, elegance.

"Just Sayin'" is a spare (there are only 10 works) yet resonant exhibition that reveals the progress of an ever-fertile, questioning and problem-solving artist at the height of his powers.

Greely Myatt, "Just Sayin'"

At David Lusk Gallery, 4540 Poplar in Laurelwood, through Oct. 1. Reception tonight, 6-8. Call (901) 767-3800.

© 2011 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.