Revenge: The Miniature Hate Paintings of Patrick W. Welch
Patrick W. Welch in his 95 small paintings at Gescheidle denies the transcendence aimed for by artists from Giotto to Rothko, in which colors seem disconnected from the material world and objects float mysteriously in space. Instead Welch’s colors and shapes are strangely static, his objects fixed or frozen in both form and meaning–an effect enhanced by the frequent inclusion of limiting texts. This approach does have a purpose, however: he wants to depict and express hatred. And because most art creates a deep connection with the viewer, he must undercut the appeal of his subjects.
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Brightly colored and somewhat obsessive, Welch’s pictures are influenced by pop art and–in part for its narrative possibilities, in part because he was “inspired by romantic notions of what being insane is”–outsider art. He also cites as influences Edward Gorey and Indian miniatures–whose jewellike colors he transmutes to produce intense clashes. Most of the paintings here are postcard size, grouped into one of two series displayed in grids. Among the 21 in “United in Their Hatred of Patrick W. Welch” is 237 Guns (the pieces are titled, but Welch left some titles out of the gallery’s documentation), which graphically illustrates being stuck in the trap of objects. A kind of pointillism creates a firearm: different size silhouettes of automatic weapons together form a single large gun, in a literal depiction of the way a fixation can grow into a prison. Somewhat modifying this fixation are the compelling, sensuous colors of the background, which form a swirling blue-and-brown pattern.
Welch says he was also influenced by alternative comics, which he first discovered in editions of the anthology Raw, published in New York in the 1980s; he was especially impressed by the nightmarish stories of Mark Beyer, whose awkward figures and spaces reminded him of outsider art. Welch’s grids surely recall comics, but they don’t tell linear stories. And their many incongruities–the generic rural landscapes, sunsets, and picture-perfect starry skies colliding with strange shapes or texts–underline the central paradox of his work: the split between traditional ideals of beauty and harmony and the discordance around and within us. The witty disparities Welch interjects and his sensual use of color can’t efface the awful fixity of his objects and words, stark reminders of the traps our culture sets for us–and that we set for ourselves.
