On December 9th, I went to “Not a Photo” at Henao Contemporary Center 5601 Edgewater Dr, Orlando, FL 32810 on exhibit was a collection of hyper
realistic and photo realistic works from today’s contemporary masters, including David Eichenberg, Matthew Cornell. Exhibit runs through January 7th, 2017.
Matthew Cornell gave a walk through of his paintings which were of all of his childhood homes. He traveled across the country with his wife to find all the places his family lived. One painting, titled Lascaux, showed the stark facade of a home at dusk illuminated by a street lamp. On either side of that painting were panels that had crayon drawings of dinosaurs. In a video documentary, the story became clear. When he visited this child hood home, the owner offered to show him around inside. In the basement Mathew discovered the drawings from his childhood on the walls. He recognized his own mark making. On the staircase was his name and the names of his siblings. The present owner Could have painted over these child hood drawings, but he felt a need to preserve them.
On the invitation, Matthew had promised cake. Sure enough, he put a bright orange cake on a sculpture stand. It blended in with the photo real theme of the show with perfection. Most people assumed it was art. I wondered if it would eve be consumed. I had to move when a movie screen was lowered to show Matthew’s artumentary. Some people sat down to talk art with me, so I had to keep the sketch fast and abbreviated. The temptation to try and aspire for photo realism had to be resisted. There just wasn’t in our time. Life keeps interrupting long periods of patient mark making.