Almost from the outset of his retrospective at the UVA Art Museum, it seems that Gabriel Laderman has a hyper-Euclidean bone to pick with nature. The early cityscapes with which co-curators Lincoln Perry, David Carbone and Langdon Quinn introduce the exhibit demonstrate the artist’s early classical landscape approach. But “Unconventional Realist” is reorganized to suit Laderman’s objectives, sharply elbowing the distant countryside with contrived geometry while also nudging Abstract Expressionism, the style of the day.
Faithful to a New Yorker’s innate comfort with structure and hardscaping—the intersection of planes, the corners and platforms of light and shadow, the unorthodoxy of a singular painted wall—Laderman reveals his prophetic viewpoint of the world. The supremacy of rooftops softened in the sallow atmosphere of commerce once seemed an ambitious ideal: A spire—by rights, by simple manifest destiny—should overtake and demoralize a mountain, just as any revolutionary idea should explode a past sentiment or inspiration. But by the last painting in “Unconventional Realist,” Laderman leads his generation to see the folly in this thinking.
 You break it, you buy it: Gabriel Laderman pushes the limits with works like "Still Life No. 5" at UVA Art Museum. |
Laderman makes a small if astute adjustment of the intellect; he begins to paint still-lifes as an array of individualistic, man-made forms that nurture a haphazard relationship with the edge of a table. Pitchers, vessels, aspic molds and an occasional loose egg assemble into weighted groups, nudging each other like subway riders toward the precipice. These still-lifes—sort of Georgio Morandi in high def—offer a demure segueway from painting a premanipulated place to constructing a theater of event. They depart from a believable stance to tempt a dubious one, proposing—in spite of the artist’s signature Klieg lighting—darker days ahead.
The curators jump another decade to take us there with Laderman’s plot-thickening 1984 allegorical triptych, “Murder and its Consequences.” In “Murder,” as in the other figurative paintings that complete the show, one sees a grander motif and culminating style developing. Laderman’s paintings become more overtly narrative, self-referential and wicked. The perspective is carved up and exaggerated, the situation hardens under an acrid mustard glow, the reserved formal balance is trashed in a chaos of matter, yet that unreliable tabletop prevails.
Simultaneously, a general sense of discord and isolation and male narcissism of scale flow through the final scenes. These works gather to confirm the dramatic “consequences” of the first lawless act—to kill off natural order through the assorted brutish desires and forays they confess. Laderman places it all on his little table; he chooses full disclosure over disclaimer.
