| Charles Wince ART REVIEW BY BRECK J.HAPNER
"...I was painting pictures to kill this dangerous beast that had an immediate impact on my survival. Art was a way
to control this overwhelming aspect of my life. My key paintings are about harnessing that moment of explosion." Now It’s Dark |
Charles Wince is clearly an enigma, a Columbus artist who leaves an indelible
impression through his dramatic/traumatic artwork and soft-spoken demeaner. Wince’s deliberate,
measured, laconic manner of speaking is in direct contrast to his paintings: explosive, totemistic
representations of self amidst contemporary society; jarring, satiric portrayals of modern culture
simultaneously joyful, contemptuous and absurd. An artist all his life, Wince wields his intellect with
demonic, sensuous energy, extrapolating pivotal symbols from the collective, communal capitalistic
and institutional psyche which are then transformed, transfigured through the psychedelic exorcism
of his brush. Wince has a huge visual vocabulary, utilizing at will images that best illustrate
his thought at any given moment. Wince’s background yields ample evidence for one tracing the reasons behind his choice of art as a vocation. "I come from a fairly disfunctional family, from the backwoods around Newark," Wince drawls with a slightly bemused expression. "For me, art was rebellious, a radical step from where I came from. I really embraced art as an identity.” Wince’s parents, appropriately named Joseph, a blue-collar worker and Mary, a Sunday school teacher, no doubt figure all-too prominently on a metaphoric level in many of Wince’s paintings, calling to the surface Freudian interpretations of divine purpose, a mission of messianic purport. Wince suffered through a kind of crucifixion as a child which is well known to those studying Wince-lore, acting as a catalyst, propelling Wince to spread the gospel through his artwork. At 11 years of age, while playing with matches, a friend lit a torch, setting off a gasoline explosion burning Wince over 87% of his body, nearly killing him. "I was in the Intensive Burn Unit of Franklin County Children’s Hospital two months," Wince pauses, reflecting thoughtfully, "I went from being very physical and sure of myself to being literally an invalid. When that happens to an eleven year old, it’s quite a shock to the system. I was very loud and extroverted, but [the accident] certainly put me in touch with my sensitive side." This incident was instrumental in forming the "resurrected" Wince, who spent his convalescence drawing, concentrating on the creative force previously lying idle within, now reborn, freed from "normal" childhood distractions. This haunting moment of burning, of fire and desperate injury which irrevocably changed Wince became a reoccurring theme in his paintings: writhing Expressionism seeking to transcend hellish metamorphosis. "I couldn’t identify with [others]. I grasped art because I saw it as my one gift I was sure of," says Wince. "I was painting pictures to kill this dangerous beast that had an immediate impact on my survival. Art was a way to control this overwhelming aspect of my life. My key paintings are about harnessing that moment of explosion." Unfortunately, a doctor prescribed a form of amphetamines to accelerate Wince’s recovery, to help him catch up in school. Not all of the side effects were positive. "I was burned out and frayed by the time I was fourteen," Wince states. His past struggle is nowhere more evident than in his work. Wince’s paintings display the symptoms of speed psychosis, of hallucinations, of delirium: a "spilling out", a frenzied, swirling conglomeration of parts and pieces, disparate elements united as a whole in each painting. Wince’s work evokes a sense of underlying unease with "normal" everyday objects turned inside-out, taking both terrifying and humorous forms. Wince has explained that his tendency to convolute elements in his work derives, in part, from his childhood trauma and to some degree, his fascination with the artists Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. In many respects, Wince’s personal experiences have equipped him incredibly well to examine through his art the very problem which has transfixed many contemporary artists: the role we each must play in living, perhaps, a meaningless, random existence, divorced from tradition structures of belief and understanding. How does one create their own universe with their own sense of purpose? We are each drowning in the overwhelming mass grave of history, cannibalizing the corpses of our forefathers, tearing at their rotting flesh for inspiration, for motivation in a time when, clearly, anything is possible and it is also quite clear that nothing may really matter. The Question of Contemporary Representation and The Contradiction of Contemporary Representation are the main conceptual themes Wince is studying. In large part, most of Wince’s supporters have been concerned with, initially, labelling his style in order to possibly understand the direction of his work. An untrained, self-taught artist, this methodology is constructive on a surface level as a categorical tool, explaining some aspects of his work, but fallacious in other arenas because it fails to take into account a huge portion of Wince’s psychological/emotional development derived from his own life experiences. Wince has been called a Naive, Primitive, Folk and Outsider Artist, but Wince is a direct product of his personal traumatic experiences while existing within our insane modern media culture. Charles Wince is a thoroughly ‘Modern Artist’, a man of his own time, despite the fact that he is ‘untrained’ and his work resembles the currently fashionable trend, for whatever reason. Wince jokes that he "...Read an article where a particular artist was called a 'Sophisticated Naive Painter,' that "There are artists out there that purposely paint in a Naive manner which is, by definition, not Naive. I’m not consciously affected by art movements and because of my idiosyncratic way of approaching art, I don’t appeal to the ‘art world.’ I had confidence in my own art, but I didn’t have any confidence that I was going to be accepted by the art world. I haven’t been told what rules to follow or what rules to break." Columbus Gallery owner Duff Lindsay of Lindsay Gallery insightfully relates: "Some people would argue that Charles doesn’t fit in to the genre [Naive Art/Folk Art], that his work is way too technically sophisticated, although there is a Visionary quality to Charles’ work. A lot of it is the way he depicted things ‘coming out’ [Flower Arrangements for the Apocalypse, Lindsay Gallery, May-June, 2002]. When you really look at the insides of some of the blossoms, they look almost like internal organs, like a body turned inside-out, evolving, metamorphosizing into a flower. They’re flowers all right, but they’re not flowers of this earth." It is this very visceral-intellectual embodiment bestowed by Wince that attacks the docile frameworks holding the traditional views of Naive Art together, making it improbable that Wince is totally of their ilk. It is the irrepressible honesty, the reality, the genuine level of passionate obssession exhibited by the Naive Artist/Outsider Artist which links Wince to this Movement. If Winces’ images seem dark or bizarre, it is because he is seeking a ritualistic counterpart to the symbols and elements we exploit in today’s culture. Wince’s images make us stop, look, consider and think. Wince’s paintings are overfilled with great themes, grand narratives and beautiful images portraying the humor, joy and love of existence contrasted with the pain we must all endure. Great art is grounded in these concepts, touching all of us with the universal truths Wince has captured with brush, paint and canvas. It is important to Wince that his audience sees the balance he has instilled in most of his work: "My art is about humor and pain --- humor is a way to combat pain. Even my more disturbing paintings have a sense of humor or exhibit some form of parody. Humor is as important as ideas like death or transfiguration --- humor is a way of fighting despair." Wince himself is incredibly moderate, self-effacing, restrained and humble about his work: "I’ve always been interested in telling a story, intriguing the viewer and myself rather than trying to dazzle the viewer with technique. The most important thing to me is the idea behind the painting. The bulk of my paintings have a storyline with a lot of contradictions as opposed to ‘pure painting’. With my 'Flower Arrangements for the Apocalypse' series, I decided to use one of the biggest cliches in art, rendering a semi-abstract subject. I’m pleased with how they turned out." Wince is also influenced by pulp fiction art with heavily outlined forms, bright, garish colors and vibrant, fantastic ‘creatures’, enjoying the genre’s overblown, maudlin, melodramatic qualities. When speaking of the color choices in his work, Wince explains "I found out that it’s just as unsettling to use turquoise and pink to define some wild scene, rather than going for Halloween greens and reds," an extension of what the German Expressionists were trying to accomplish. "I also feel my use of text is very important. There are certain things you can do with words that you can’t convey with images and vice-versa. A picture is worth a thousand words, but if you can combine the two, it makes a more forceful statement." The energy and movement of Winces’ paintings stand in stark contrast to Wince himself, seated at the encrusted mosaic kitchen table at his art-filled Victorian Village home. Reserved, quiet and contemplative, he is almost the antithesis of his own work. There is nothing superfluous about Wince: all energy is channeled into his art. It is almost as if the paintings are a truer representation of Wince than Wince himself. Wince’s somatic body is the medium through which his overburdened mind filters its explosive, lovely and abominable cache onto the canvas. "Never a rose without the thorn, nor love without a prick" Wince murmurs while walking outside, gazing out off his deck onto the Garden he has created below. "I’m getting older, but I still feel as if I have a lot to do. I gave up hope of ever fitting into the mainstream, so I must spend the time I have left seeking out other worlds." |
