All thanks to Harry for the first official print coverage of the American Ruralist Movement here in Chicago. If you missed last week's article in Time Out Chicago, here is Ruth Lopez's column on the Fresh Faces exhibition (with 20+ works by Harry) currenly on view at Judy Saslow Gallery.
“Fresh Faces”
Judy A Saslow Gallery, through Feb 10.
This outsider/self-taught/visionary art gallery continues its tradition of spotlighting contemporary artists who are working under the influence of those genres in an annual show. This version of “Fresh Faces” features work by three artists: Caroline Anderson, Karl Mullen and Harry. While the textured abstractions by Anderson and figurative works on paper by Philadelphia-based artist Mullen didn’t hold our attention, the latex on wood paintings in muted tones of one Harry C. Underwood (who just goes by his first name) did.
Harry, a member of the Plowhaus artist cooperative in East Nashville, Tennessee, first showed up in Chicago a few years ago at the now-defunct Jane Addams Hull House Center for Arts & Culture in Uptown. He’s aligned with local artist Dolan Geiman and Texas artist Chicken George to form the American Ruralist Movement, which lists among its interests “cutoff denims for swimmin’.”
In a painting titled The Most World Famous, Henry Darger meets Grandma Moses in a large narrative painting that includes little boys standing near a motel pool in their swim shorts, a floating stripper, a quaint Tennessee town on a hillside, soldiers and a trolley car. Tiny lines of nearly unreadable text seem scratched on the surface. Harry has a penchant for certain motifs and objects—bathing beauties and motel pools, old bicycles and vintage cars, and even a pose of a man and woman in conversation—which make repeat appearances in his many paintings. Rather than boring, though, Harry has created a unified vocabulary for his winsome work.—Ruth Lopez
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