Captain Beefheart: ‘Standing on One Hand’ exhibition by Don Van Vliet at the Michael Werner Gallery
Like an apocalypse that has hit a minimally furnished living room, Don Van Vliet’s paintings have exploded across the walls of the Michael Werner Gallery. Best known for his similarly confronting sound as Captain Beefheart, his current ‘Standing on One Hand’ exhibit will be the first time his art has been displayed solo in Britain in nearly 30 years. The collection features paintings done after he had retired from music, charting his artistic journey from the 1980s through the next decade.
Under the Beefheart moniker, he fused blues, jazz, and avant-garde, resulting in a sound closer to something out of the surrealist movement rather than any discernible genre. His paintings are similar; you see hints of possible influences, but his style is so bold you cannot see anything other than him. More than anything else, his work is informed by nature, which rules every brushstroke.
Van Vliet has spoken often about the inspiration he drew from the desert, where he spent large portions of his life. In paintings like Feather Times a Feather and Crow Dance a Panther, you see the blistering heat he felt translated on the canvas. He used colour with wanton abandon, but his backgrounds are nearly all bright white, like staring into the desert sun. It’s a strange counterbalance – colour and then the distinct lack of it. It’s like he’s giving you too much and too little simultaneously, a perfect nod to the cruel terrain he loved so much.
The Michael Werner Gallery seems to echo that palette. Two paintings, both frenzied and muddied with colour, sit on ivory walls, divided by a giant white ornate fireplace. Whether intentional or not, it’s a fitting reflection of Van Vliet’s style, even if it seems the opposite. According to him, society was becoming too distant from nature, too out of touch. Creating proximity to something suburban underscores his point perfectly. Van Vliet’s work is not intended for you to project ideals on; it’s for him to show you his.
Van Vliet typically worked on enormous canvases, and the spacious rooms really highlight the scale. Ming Move, a towering 7-foot marvel, dominates. Thick lashings of paint make up a burgundy donkey. It’s one of the most realistic – and that’s generous – depictions in the gallery, and it’s strangely magnetic. Similar behemoths include Rolled Roots Gnarled Like Rakers, a muddy aurora borealis among the most chaotic.
Not that you need to because they’re so huge, but you can stand inches away and see every overzealous glob of paint Van Vliet made. The paintings are charged with electricity that stems from Van Vliet’s explosive gestures, which you can trace through the movement and flow of every painting. He said how he reconnected with the natural world was done “very gingerly”, but this exhibition proves the opposite. The swirling landscapes and childlike suggestions of animals and strange creatures Van Vliet dreams up suggest some kind of confrontation. Not just because the works are haphazard but because they reflect his subconscious battle with the pull of nature and his commercial success, for want of a better word.
Don Van Vliet’s ‘Standing on One Hand’ is now running at the Michael Werner Gallery until Saturday, February 17th, 2024.
