John McAllister, “Sultry Sun Sang Our Songs” at Richard Telles Fine Arts

The optical intensity of John McAllister’s recent paintings on view at Richard Telles Fine Arts have an instant lure to anyone who is a sucker for pure, unadulterated color. The artist, already known for his aptitude toward saturated hues, continues his explorations of intertwined interior/exterior spaces in the current exhibition. The Louisiana-born artist has also earned a reputation for an overt association to modernist schools—namely the Fauves, Les Nabis, and the influence of Japonisme. The legacy of Matisse is acutely felt, in particular the modernist icon’s Red Studio (1911), not only in subject, but also the technique of allowing the underpainting and raw canvas instead of drawn lines to delineate the objects in the foreground. However, McAllister is not merely rehashing these popular standards of the past. Rather, the familiar sources merge, quite fantastically, with notions of historic Japanese styles such as Rinpa and Kano (with hot pink replacing gold leaf), perhaps inspired by the artist’s recent trip to Japan which he spent “immersed in its museums.” The densely layered surfaces also suggest references to Pattern and Decoration with hints of Op Art, giving them a shot of neon swagger, in effect turning les fauves into bête très sauvage.

In Telles’ main gallery space, a large Japanese style six-panel folding screen, or byobu, is a symphony in pink, accented with greens, blues and tints of orange. The simplicity of the interior scene on the “front” is duplicitous; the longer you look, the more things go awry. On each end of the screen, what initially pass for windows looking out into a lush landscape are, upon further review, a pair of byobu within the byobu—what initially pass as exterior scenes viewed through a window, instead confirm to be free-standing fixtures holding the middle ground in check. Well, sort of. The sense of pictorial depth in McAllister’s compositions is in a state of continual flux. In painting after painting, the artist deftly complicates the perspective through intricate patterning, optical illusion, and manipulations of unusual and extreme color combinations, at times combining complementary colors at such extreme shades and tints that they appear almost monochromatic. Tabletop still lifes and soothing landscape vistas defy expectations as colors depart from their standard behavior: cool blues and minty greens expand into the realm of the viewer, while magentas and hot pink coyly recede into the distance. Though definitively attuned to an array of modernist influences, McAllister avoids slipping into clichés, but instead suggests how much territory remains unexplored.