Gallery KH

Gallery KH's latest show celebrates new work from artists Michael Fitts and Cristine Guerrero. While both artists have very different content and style, the ways in which they paint are very similar to one another. In both cases, the artists paint on flat backgrounds; Guerrero on stark white and Fitts on scrap metal. The two also paint in a photo-realistic way. While from there on, the two bodies of work diverge, these common denominators make for a solid pairing.
One man's trash is Michael Fitts's treasure. His body of work consists of paintings of throw away items on pieces of metal. The subjects, which were meant to be hauled off to the garbage dump to eventually decay, are now memorialized on a material that will span the test of time. Items Fitts has chosen to freeze frame include a Twinkie package, paper planes, a popcorn box, and dress patterns. While the other subjects are classic items that resist dating, the dress patterns are clearly from the 1960's era. They also stand out because the subject matter being painted is flat and more readily shows flaws in creating form, making these works appear less realistic than the others. Overall though, Fitts's body of work is a very poignant way of addressing throw-away culture.
Cristine Guerrero's work consists of several pairs of images in which the formal elements mimic each other. In Dulce IV, a woman wearing a shiny-red dress with a sweetheart neckline is matched up with a red heart-shaped lollipop. Fresquita Como Una Rosa II pairs a pink frilly skirt with a pink rose. A woman's behind is paired with ice cream in Quedarse Helado. These and all the other works juxtapose parts of women's bodies with food, flowers, or objects from traditional women's work (i.e. sewing needles). The work has good intentions in addressing the commodification of parts of the female anatomy and clothing contributing to this, but the way the work is executed takes away from the content. Each juxtaposition is created by accentuating common formal elements between the two images, and the work goes directly to the same sort of strategy used in advertising a few years back.