From Range Exhibit

Table Objects No. 7

122 cm x 153 cm 

Acrylic on canvas 

2017

Table Objects No. 8

122 cm x 153 cm 

Acrylic on canvas

2017

Range

RANGE

Resty Tica and Rick Hernandez at Renaissance

By Cid Reyes

Two-man shows are the artistic equivalent of partnership in business where the two investors collectively bring their capital and individual strengths and skills. In like manner, a tandem show must never proceed just for the purpose of filling up a sizable gallery space, but more significantly, to draw attention either to the similarity or contrast of themes, because, to paraphrase a popular expression: two paintbrushes are better than one.

Currently on view at the Renaissance Gallery is the tandem exhibition of Resty Tica and Rick Hernandez in a show titled “Range.” Both are avowed abstractionists showing their works at the gallery that has made abstraction the idiom of choice. But even in abstraction, commonalities may occur as well as diversions. To wit: can anything be more different than Jackson’s Pollock’s wild gestural strokes and Marc Rothko’s serene fields of color?

Now with several solo exhibitions to his name, Resty Tica has consistently pursued an abstraction of subtlety and tranquility, evoking an illusion of vast spaces, the more intriguing because they are contained within a comparatively limited space of pristine paper and contained under the protective armor of a glassed frame. Tica’s works  allude to nature and the passage of time, even within the circumscribed span of a day and night. They are extremely lyrical but with a decidedly muffled tone, as though the rising of the visual decibels, as it were, had not been allowed to rise higher than an octave. Thus, expect no piercing screams of emotions, or outrage, or agitations of the spirit. Instead, there are visual whispers, and certainly not shy, but confidently delivered and properly enunciated.

For instance, “Vermillion Afternoon” conveys a shimmering brilliance in sync with the setting sun, as the red-orange ball of fire starts to descend below the quietly rippling waters of the bay. In the plainly titled “Leaves,” again it is the implication of hues, verdant green, sternly avoiding this side of lush and lavish nature that can manifest itself in flamboyant foliage and vegetation.

In Tica’s hands, abstraction is a gentle orchestration of space and subtleties, achieved through controlled brushwork, stripping away unnecessary excrescences but never to the extent of aridity.

If Resty Tica is a devotee of space, Rick Hernandez is an acolyte of geometry. And what more primal exemplar of geometry is there than the ordinary domestic table? With its flat, slab like surface, whether in the shape of a square, rectangle, circle or triangle, and its four upright legs, the object is all angles at every corner. No wonder, Picasso and Braque used the table as the arena of all their fractured still lifes, upon which level surface they placed their jugs and carafes, wine bottles and fruit dish, compote bowls and saucepans, skulls and mandolin.

Hernandez, however, has opted for a more severe and stark territory, a puritan’s table, as it were, unburdened by objects and ornaments. This is a table that can metamorphose into a window or a door, and just as easily pay homage to Mondrian or to Ad Reinhardt or to Agnes Martin.

In “Range,” both Resty Tica and Rick Hernandez continually refine their art until their works reach a stage of distilled presence and elegant detachment, thereby reaping the rewards of their artistic capital and individual strengths.

March 2017