visual arts
BY SUZI STEFFEN
Kirk Lybecker’s A Pleasant Upscale View of Redemption
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Controversial…Compelling…Inspiring…
A NEW PLAY
So Far From Shore
The World Without Us
Urban blight glows at Opus6ix
I
try not to review shows from the
same place two art columns in a row.
Eugene has so many good galleries and
alternative art spaces that it doesn’t seem
quite fair — but my newfound espresso
addiction changed my plans. I popped into
Café Perugino for a latte over the weekend,
and I glimpsed Kirk Lybecker’s Lunch at
the Café Hysteria hanging on the brick
wall. The seductive shine of the oil paint
and the fl at panels of color that defi ne a
broken-down city setting drew my eye
over and over.
OK, I thought, I’ll glance at his show
at Opus6ix’s freshly named Backdoor
Gallery. What a stunner! Lybecker’s large-
scale, meticulously rendered portraits of
urban decay radiate light and color from
every wall. Back in the day (the mid-19th-
century day, that is), canvases as big as
A Pleasant Upscale View of Redemption
(42” x 60”) would be reserved for Grand
Historical Narrative. Like the Ashcan
painters of New York’s blight 100 years
ago, Lybecker — who paints Portland’s
corroded spots — turns that assumption on
its head. But unlike them, his use of intense
primary colors and lack of human subjects
make the city itself glorious in transition.
From the gloomy Sanctuary for the
Dispossessed to the compelling The Offi ce
Furniture of Mortality, with its crumpled
fast food cans and bags as the only sign of
human activity; from the specifi c bricks
of Another Day at the Hotel Rorschach to
the tongue-in-cheek irony in The Nature
of Fracture and Paradox, Lybecker
exerts such control over his material and
such precise rendering that he makes the
breakdown of formerly bustling areas a joy
to behold.
And Lybecker nails the loneliness of
the neglected buildings, their interiors
marked by tags and longing for human
habitation. The driving force behind these
spaces is gone, the paintings suggest, and
he captures the dusty air itself, lurking
without motivation. Yet the bright colors of
Elevator Music and Dreams of Idaho show
sunlight falling in empty rooms, where
doors have been left open and the detritus
of the Golden Arches limps through space.
Someone once cared for these places, and
Lybecker’s eye makes us care again. ew
BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
by local playwright Martin Cohen
A play about a young man’s courageous
struggle to free himself from his abusive
past of childhood sexual abuse.
January 18 thru February 2
Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm • Sundays at 2pm
WILDISH THEATRE
630 Main Street, Springfield
Order online www.tixrus.us
Box Office 606-1125
Sponsored by:
Or haGan Jewish Community • Unity of the Valley Church • St. Mary’s Episcopal • Haugland Foundation
EUGENE WEEKLY JANUARY 24, 2008 21