Studying Mandalas

Sam Reveles

Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

Alison Hearst

Sam Reveles,Mandala for Juarez No. 3, 2009-2010; oil and acrylic on canvas; 79 x 89 inches; Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Sam Reveles, Insurgentes, 2009; oil and acrylic on canvas; 67 x 89 inches; Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Sam Reveles’ exhibition Juarez Paintings, on view at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, is equally violent and meditative. Ten recent oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and several gouaches on paper each present energetic abstractions that appear, at first blush, as garish and dizzying. However, while Reveles’ works include layers of agitated, vividly colored gestural markings, the overall installation feels calm and benign—due perhaps to the pristine gallery setting, Reveles’ rather jovial palette and the fact that four of the paintings approximate mandala forms. Then again, whatever tranquility pervades the series, the paintings’ subject could be no further from peace.

Reveles began his “Juarez paintings” after a recent move from New York City to his hometown of El Paso, Texas. Just across the border, Juarez, Mexico, El Paso’s sister city, has experienced an exponential increase in violence over the past three years due to warring drug trafficking gangs. Once a relatively safe place, Juarez is currently the world’s murder capital, counting over 5,000 homicides in the past two years alone. To say that the devastating and seemingly endless violence in Juarez has wholly affected life along the border is an understatement. Despair, anger, panic and despondency now perforate the region. It is unclear whether Reveles’ relocation to El Paso was a direct reaction to the unrest, but his paintings at Dunn and Brown Contemporary genuinely impart the situation in Juarez and the relating sentiments in a frenzied, visceral way. Striking, agitated marks consume most of the paintings and works on paper, primitively signifying the city’s turbulence, as well as the artist’s unease with the current state of affairs.

A notable exception is Catedral, a small canvas near the gallery’s entrance. Compared to the rest of the works, the painting is muted and somber, and also has a clear pictorial referent. On the canvas a mass of swirling, cool-toned brushstrokes accumulates above a slice of white gesso; drips from the agitated painterly marks slightly obscure the white area. Here, it is difficult not to think of another painting titled “cathedral,” this one by Jackson Pollock. Pollock’s Cathedral features a tight web of gray and black drips, which Frank O’Hara likened to the façade of a gothic cathedral. Reveles, by contrast, conveys architectural elements through loose gestures of subdued blues and purples. Reveles’ reference is likely the Catedral de Ciudad Juárez, centrally located in the historical area of Juarez and visible from many points throughout the city. Like Pollock’s works, Reveles’ cannot be divorced from the physical act of painting; his animated yet controlled process is especially manifest in the more sizable works.

Two of the largest paintings, Insurgentes and Mandala Paintingfor Juarez No. 3, face each other from opposing ends of the gallery. While christened with disparate titles—one noting rebellion and revolt and the other suggesting a sacred, spiritual space—the works are visually not so different from one another. Insurgentes primarily features an orb-shaped, networklike tangle of concise, brightly colored gestural marks. Underneath the multilayered whorl stretches a field of varicolored vertical stripes akin to those found in a Mexican serape. In Mandala Painting for Juarez No. 3, a similar mandala shape of expressive marks covers a larger area of colored bands. Although remarkably similar to Insurgentes, Mandala Painting for Juarez No. 3 is more meditative and focused; the marks are tighter, less colorful and seemingly more calculated.

The exhibition includes three other Mandala paintings, and while mandalas are intended as peace-inducing, sacred spaces protected from the world’s impurities, the violent urgency of Reveles’ mark-making keeps the works from projecting utter tranquility. Using the bright, cheerful colors known to Mexico—colors seen in the once-bustling markets and streets of Juarez—the Mandala paintings pay homage to the city, albeit in an unsettling way. Sadly, these disquieting portrayals bear palpable, regrettable truths. Reveles’ abstract reflections are energetic, steadfast, violent, mournful, sometimes cheerful and always visceral, like their namesake city.