26 april 2022, Wouter van den Eijkel
Dad bod
All clichés are true to some extent, also those surrounding the birth of a child, yet the platitudes about new experiences and emotions are rarely incorporated in paintings. Not at all like the American painter Jack Shure does in Dad Bod; Shure's first solo exhibition in the Netherlands at Marian Cramer Projects. On his canvases full of references to popular culture, he combines different styles and you will find beauty next to ugliness.
Until recently, gallerist Marian Cramer mainly worked with British artists. Brexit made it more difficult to import and export works, so Cramer started looking for other artists. An American collector pointed her to the painter from Boulder, Colorado.
Jack Shure uses every square inch of his canvases. In his oil paintings he incorporates cartoon figures and references to popular culture, but also to classical painting, childhood memories, everyday objects and fabrics with stitching or patterns. Each of them worked out in the greatest detail. The combination of high and low culture makes Shure's compositions playful, a postmodern mix in which everything flows together: from Snow White to Italian Renaissance landscapes and from anatomical studies to Asian carvings.
Jack Shure, This Score Cannot Be Kept, 2022, Marian Cramer Projects
As a viewer, you constantly notice new details on the full canvases, but what stays with you afterwards is, in addition to a few remarkable elements, especially the atmosphere of the compositions. A kind of mood that summarizes the whole. In a recent interview, Shure says of his work: My work is a distilled reflection of the significant moments, lessons, and inspirations of my life. Pulling imagery from both my childhood, currently, and perhaps the future simultaneously. I want my pictures to tell a story that is not an obvious one, but one that takes a moment of contemplation and discovery while pushing boundaries of ugliness and beauty. It invites the observer to recognize that one cannot exist without the other. To me beauty is a choice by way of transmutation thus, only existing through perception."
Dad Bod
The term Dad Bod appeared about ten years ago and refers to the body of a man who recently became a father. Sport and physical exertion were exchanged for broken nights and the toned body is gone. At first, the term only applied to booming movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, but it soon became more widely used. The related subject, (new) parenthood, is not often discussed in contemporary art, and certainly not a current topic among male artists.
That all clichés contain a grain of truth, became clear to Shure after the birth of his daughter. Although pregnancy and child birth are biological processes, the impact new life has on one's inner life remains as mysterious as it is difficult to explain. The birth of a child makes a person experience emotions that were previously unknown and think about things that were previously unimaginable. Dad Bod is a visual record of those new experiences and a reflection on aging.
Nothing rests
Judging by the 12 works on display at Marian Cramer, Dad Bod is not only about the physical changes, although they certainly play a role, but also the mental changes that occur. The physical decline can be seen in the form of a recurring voluptuous female nude - on Kiss the Dirt even flanked by a pair of slender legs of a stripper.
Jack Shure, Nothing Rests, 2022, Marian Cramer Projects
More striking is the male figure that seems to have fallen into a cocktail glass in Nothing Rests. It is a guess, but you can interpret it as a phase of life that has come to an end. The same can be said for the grissaile painted upper part of Contemplating The Half Truth. Is it a closed phase of life or are they demons from a past? The contrast with the colourful lower part seems to suggests so.
Jack Shure, Contemplating The Half Truth, 2022, Marian Cramer Projects
Much more than the exact meaning of all the individual elements, Shure seems to care about the atmosphere of the compositions. Although it is often difficult to put into words, it is the timbre that remains with the viewer. Judging by the landscapes in the background, you would say that the atmosphere is contemplative and mysterious and is met with playful and light-hearted elements. Shure uses all his skills to playfully come to terms with the passing of time.
This summer Marian Cramer will also show Shure's work at the Vrijpaleis (Paleisstraat 107) in Amsterdamm
