This exhibition includes paintings inspired by historic images of the Assumption, the Ascension, and of heaven. Influenced by both Gothic paintings and cartoons from his childhood, the artist inserts parts or all of his own body into each image. In several of the paintings the figure is shown with his legs up, in a position that may be both sexual and infantile, like a character that has been knocked out in a cartoon. Also included is an image of Hercules, a motif the artist has worked with across years. Long associated with protective power, in this painting Hercules is fat and propped up from behind with a crutch.
Filled with desire, simultaneously ecstatic and comic, the grandiosity of the subjects is undercut by Feintuch’s fidelity to naturalistic, unidealized form that veers towards caricature.
May 3, 2014
