| On the ferry ride across the Long Island Sound, I stared at the shoreline of Shelter Island and understood why the artist David Rankin took up a studio here. The island itself is situated between the North and South Forks of Long Island, with no bridge to the mainland. One ten-minute boat ride is the only passage from here to there. And in that time span, leaning on the rail of the boat looking at the turbulent waters, one is quieted by the ancient presence below. |
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Steven Psyllos on David Rankin
On the ferry ride across the Long Island Sound, I stared at the shoreline of Shelter Island and understood why the artist David Rankin took up a studio here. The island itself is situated between the North and South Forks of Long Island, with no bridge to the mainland. One ten-minute boat ride is the only passage from here to there. And in that time span, leaning on the rail of the boat looking at the turbulent waters, one is quieted by the ancient presence below.
Rankin’s work is stripped bare of the irony, the strategy, the decorum that fills the day-to-day back there over my shoulder. His work is from the gut, is led from the head and the heart. He speaks of pain in layers of paint. Of joy, of love. Of the human condition, where we have been, where we aspire to go. The delicacy, the immediacy of this moment. The man peels back the bullshit to reveal the essence. In that, speaking with the man is greatly a dialogue on various inspirations, feelings.
“Even as a young artist, the things that moved me and the things that I tried to express in my paintings were things that would give people some sense of poetic involvement,” he tells me. “I wanted to go out into the world and communicate on a deep, profound human level.”
He uses the word “blood” often while walking around his studio during my first visit. He paints “specters” on canvas. He constructs sculptures with “bones.” But after speaking with the gentleman on several occasions, I realize that Rankin uses the term “blood” not only to express the depth of this life, the finite mortality—often a dark realization, centered in death—but also to refer to that which animates, that which represents passion, much as when one is excited one feels the blood rush. That stream that is underlying, providing, enabling. The specters represent people, humanity, the grand party to which we have all been invited. The bones are his new attempt at representing the human form, but with his own vocabulary. His skeletal design may not be the original, but it feels right.
In October, Rankin held his first sculptural exhibition at the Andre Zarre Gallery in SoHo. It is evident that his latest family of sculptures have emerged from his canvases, the calligraphy of his compositions have stepped forth to take up space, reflect light, cast shadows. The artist had been searching for a material to sculpt with for some time before stumbling upon bamboo. Rankin tells me that it has the same “nervous energy” as his characters. He binds the bamboo just as builders construct scaffolding in China and Japan. He treats the material with paint and grout to emphasize the curvature of the line, highlight the bone-like quality of the shoot. There is so much material to each piece, yet no sculpture feels heavy. Unlike the paintings, which feel loaded with years of experience and sentiment and sediment, these sculptures feel free, open.
This point is odd because a few of the structures can be described as almost cage-like. If I were to describe Many Rooms, I would say it is essentially a grid of four walls and a ceiling. A viewer stands on the outside. Thing is, it never feels constricting. In fact, the work feels inviting, drawing the eye to the negative space, asking one to reach in. “I don’t want any notion of a grid that would preclude your participation, exclude your entrance,” he says. “The only grid I want to promote is a grid of arms and limbs and shoulders and hips of a group of people.” He is describing the “specters” that have occupied his paintings for years.
This past August, Rankin hung a collection at the Boltax Gallery on Shelter Island, a group of paintings that stemmed from his “discovery” of Mexico and the passion that it stirred in him. The works are mainly earthtones that seem roasted beneath an unrelenting sun. In discussing Mexico, he mentions the Day of the Dead, a celebration of ancestry when all make music and dance in the cemeteries. I imagine the jangling bones of those long gone and how this artist would see pleasure in the stirring of these souls. But what others might think macabre, Rankin sees as another affirmation of the living, the lineage of mankind.
Metaphor plays a large role in the toolbox of David Rankin. His works are loaded with internal symbols, as if a language in formation. Many of his pieces are rooted in poets such as Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, when not from mythology or philosophy. In his sculpture Jacob’s Ladder, we find another representation of the human form, a new interpretation of a human skeleton. Our two legs grounded, the rungs our ribs, our minds forever in the clouds, reaching towards the higher plane, our eyes glazed over with fantasy. In shape, it is a ladder indeed. But to leave it there is to miss out on what this artist offers: sincere expression in an age of “joyless, juiceless, and loveless” art.
The crown jewel in the upcoming show is Someone. The work was inspired by a book by Rankin’s wife, Lily Brett, acclaimed author and poet. Called The Auschwitz Poems, it dwells on what her parents survived. The artist’s spouse has had a great effect on his life and his evolution as an artist. “When couples become so close, and the love is so profound, there are many aspects of the couple that are separate from the two individual people. So the partnership is almost its own identity: a third life going on, a third level of creative thinking, and a third presence.”
He continues: “That is reflected in the poem my wife wrote called Someone, which I tried to achieve in a sculpture as well. It’s a very simple schematic image: there are two separate elements, but it is really three and they are endlessly interconnected.”
“I think that is an important part of art in general,” he reasons. “If you don’t create that third aspect of the relationship between you and the viewer, and the entity of what the painting is, you only have a two-dimensional painting going on.”
David Rankin’s work is deeply rooted and deserves long moments of one’s time to meditate upon. But the reward is everything, it’s the language we all speak, if not with utterances than with our heart’s beat.
