Capalino and Stewart Display Paintings in Fisher Hall
by Andrew Leland

Sophomores Borden Capalino and Nate Stewart held an extremely impressive impromptu painting exhibition in Fisher Hall this week. They found out that the space would be available just before they left for Spring Break, so they decided to put together a show from paintings they had been working on in their private readings with Professor of Art John Pearson. They also included some new paintings, made expressly for this week’s exhibition.

(photo by Areca Treon)

The show consisted of 16 pieces: seven paintings each, as well as two collaborative Plexiglas sculptures. The artists share a studio space in Hales and work together. They also share an interest in style and technique. Their work falls under the classification known in art historical terminology as Abstract Expressionism. This school of painting and art emphasizes the importance of the act of creation, rather than the traditional focus on the finished object. Like Paintings is a Mutha — the name Capalino and Stewart used to promote their exhibition around campus — this school of art encompasses works that are purely abstract as well as ones that contain elements of expressionism. It often combines the two elements in one painting.
Some works in the show, however, especially Stewart’s, have a near photo-realistic quality. Stewart found the pictures on which he based his representational paintings on the internet. He said that the randomness of the images is intentional. “I’ve lost hope in an ability to convey intention through representation in art, or to convey a clear message,” he said, “so the subject matter of the paintings was undoing itself.” One example is a painting of a man sitting on a couch, staring off into nothingness, the bottom of the canvas left “raw.” All we can see is the back of his head. 
Another painting shows two blurred hands manipulating overturned nutshells in a game of “three-card Monty.” Stewart is interested in “sleight of hand, other games you can play, in terms of thinking about magic and illusion.” These are not straightforward representations of the source photographs, though. The images are blurry, the colors simplified and sharpened. Stewart toys with the edges of his paintings, calling attention to the conventions of painting, making them, in true abstract expressionistic form, less about any message or meaning the painting might convey, and more about the paint itself.

Capalino’s paintings also have this self-referential tendency, but his work seems more improvisational, more humorous. One painting, consisting of a large red field with silver fringes, has the effect of being both rudimentary and sophisticated at the same time. “I’m never sure exactly how it’s going to turn out,” he said. “I thought of that painting as kind of funny, like the idea of a comical brushstroke. I sort of got a kick out of that.”

Another way in which he and Stewart call attention to the pint itself, rather than what the paint evokes, is by combining a sensuous, diffused and atmospheric background with rough and fast slashes of paint across the canvas. Multiple panels, knife-slashes in the canvas itself as well as paint actually bleeding off of the canvas onto the walls of the Fisher gallery — all these techniques are emblematic of their attitude toward painting. The two painters’ works are mixed together in the gallery, so visitors can’t know who painted what without asking. This ambivalence, like the other “arbitrary” aspects of their painting, is intentional.

Those who attended the closing reception on Thursday night were duly impressed. Capalino and Stewart plan to have another show next year, possibly in September. Their professor, Pearson, also appeared pleased with their work. “Borden and Nate are taking chances with these paintings, and they are very comfortable with their materials,” he said. “People need to know that there’s some real painting going on here at Oberlin.”