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The Journal Gallery

New York

Louis Eisner

THE JOURNAL GALLERY

Sep 01, 2021

Sep 21, 2021

Where Seldom is Heard

The “woodshed” is where the artist goes to work in solitude. It has been six years since Louis Eisner’s last solo show.

This is his first exhibition with the Journal Gallery. The titles of his four paintings allude to “Home on the Range”, the unofficial 19th
century anthem of the American prairie. There is a magic hour on the prairie when the vast 360-degree horizon offers four different dispositions at the same moment. “Home on the Range” is the artist’s interpretation of this range, a range of emotion. Stylistically, the four paintings in the show, are both representational and expressionistic.

The exhibition opens with “Buffalo”, a dilapidated car. The engine and wheels are vaguely discernable, as are the exhaust pipes belching out clouds of smoke. The jalopy is our vehicle for the journey through the dreamscape of the show. The old girl has long since lost her vanity but, with fits and starts, reliably gets us going.

The second work is a landscape. “Likely No More to Return” follows a red road at crepuscule; the trail from where we started to where we must go; the familiar to the unknown, the two-way street of subjective and objective reality.
“Where Seldom is Heard”, is a dreamscape. The land is momentarily silent, but the swirling clouds have witnessed a wrenching of nature or violence of man that has cleaved the red earth in two. It is an anxious moment, uncertain of whether the worst has passed or is yet to come. The only sign of life are the relics of wooden posts, ancient reminders that humans once tried their best to manage this rugged land.

“Home on the Range” is the show’s headliner. A sleeping beast hugs its pillow in blissful peace while its dentures, floating in a glass beside the bed, are aching to tell us a different story. Here lies the dreamer at home with the full range of emotions that inhabit our imagination, from serenity to rage, the angelic beast in the vast prairie of subjective experience.

Artworks
Louis Eisner
Where Seldom Is Heard, 2021
Oil on canvas in artist frame
77 x 53 inches

Home on the Range,
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Louis Eisner
Likely No More to Return, 2021
Oil on canvas in artist frame
35 x 28 1/2 inches
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Louis Eisner
Buffalo, 2021
Oil on canvas in artist frame
40 x 52 inches
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