Tempus Projects has been Tampa’s most unique home for adventurous visual art since long before it moved into its current space, where it now anchors the fast-emerging Florida Avenue arts strip. The addition of the Quaid sister gallery/collective earlier this year injected a wildness, turned up the volume to 11.
But in the years I’ve been going to Tempus and then Quaid shows like clockwork, I haven’t seen anything that excites me more than what they’ve got up right now. It’s a show that both highlights the relevance of Tampa artists, and brings in the kind of cutting-edge out-of-towners that don’t show up often enough at local museums.
On the Quaid side, there’s Justin Nelson’s Miracle Crusade. If you’ve spent much time in Seminole Heights, you might recognize Nelson’s work from the hobbling parade of mournful, gape-mouthed ghosts that long decorated local ‘bandos. Miracle Crusade is a more subdued and thoughtful body of work, revolving around textural abstractions and highly detailed line drawings.
Nelson says the show was inspired by the work of Japanese Ukiyo-E printers like Hokusai, and you can see it in a couple of ways. He’s obsessed with the complexity of human hands, and here he renders them with a mix of precise lines and distorted physiognomy that suggests a woodcut by Egon Schiele. In the more abstract works, colors move in waves, clustering and overlapping with the controlled business of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. It’s all pulled together by the same pinks and greys as I Am So Sickened Now, last year’s collaboration between Nelson and Tempus head Tracy Midulla Reller at Workspace Gallery.
On the Tempus side of things, Nicholas Moenich’s wall sculptures are smooth, appetizing toruses, bending glossy shapes growing strange fuzz. They perch on the walls like coral or automobile wreckage.
But the show’s revelation is Jenal Dolson, whose big, arresting paintings alternate wall space with Moenich’s sculptures. Dolson, based in Toronto, crafts large canvasses that show the potential of abstraction beyond the stereotype of loose scrawls or impulsive splatter. Made up of warm, intersecting half-moons, compact, almost sculpted drips, and intersecting lines and dots, Dolson’s work is incredibly intentional, careful, and structured, full of high contrast, foreground-background arrangements and dynamic motion.
It’s an abstraction that demands, or commands, that you find meaning in it. For me, what emerged were strange, asymmetrical faces, demure veils, dripping mouths, fantasy moonscapes. But that’s just how I’m wired – if you’re inclined to see shapes in clouds, you’ll find a bit of yourself reflected back here. (You can see some of Dolson's current work at her website, but you might not want to ruin it before seeing it in person).
I’m less well equipped to tell you why Dolson’s work is so formally arresting, but it speaks for itself pretty clearly. There’s a unity and determination that reaches out of the canvas and grabs you. The experience of standing in front of one of these things is not to be missed.
The show opened on Nov. 1, but there will be at least two more opportunities to soak in all this great work. Tonight, Fri., Nov. 14, at 8 p.m., Quaid hosts its regular artist interview series, Between Two Quaids, with Anthony Record interviewing Justin Nelson about the show. Then on Nov. 22nd, Nelson and Neil Bender (who guest-curated the Tempus show) are throwing a Wu-Tang Clan-themed dance party. Get there before the lights go out.