"Steve Huston: Contend" at Skotia

New media, the cyborg, high concept, disembodied artmaking...just when it seems the mind has gained supremacy, along comes a painter like Steve Huston. Flesh and blood, scar tissue, real bodies moving in space, all of these take the upper hand in Huston's work, where conceptual discourse takes a backseat to luscious, superficial paint.

The works on view in Steve Huston: Contend focus intently on material essence: the body, the physicality of paint, the sheen of light on a surface, the objectness of painting.

Save the oversize centerpiece Taut, each of the eleven works in the show zoom in close-up on pairs of fighters grappling in close proximity. They dance on uninterrupted prosceniums of modulated gray, the play of shadows and gestural zips of motion the only departure of attention from each figure.

In Whizzer the defender is backed up, as though on the ropes, to the edge of the canvas, absorbing a head butt to the torso from his aggressor. The lightning bolt stripes on each of their trunks, in burnt orange and turquoise respectively, make emphatic the intensity of the moment.



Whizzer (2009) 24 x 36 in., oil on panel

Those stripes, along with the clenched half-glove, parse clues to comic art and action cinema, both key influences to the artist's work. Huston began his career working in illustration for major Hollywood studios before moving on to teach life drawing and anatomy at Disney and Dreamworks studios. Thus, these two grasping figures become super heroes in action, battling for a subjective prize known only to themselves.

Going Down aptly demonstrates the artist's familiarity with anatomy. The fighter to the left is contorted, interestingly enough, into the crotch of his assailant, musculature and skeletal form in full tension. Thickly impastoed passages reveal layers into the bodies, from scar tissue to skin, and flecks of blood.



Going Down (2009) 36 x 48 in., oil on panel

These globs of paint, at times rendering the fighters as Bacon-esque slabs of meat, unfortunately function as the only distractions to an otherwise immaculate feast of surface gloss.

The sheen on his hotly lighted subjects coax out the second major influence in Huston's work, that of the proto-Baroque. Theatrical in staging, and minimal of composition, all attention is directed to the action itself.

The centerpiece of the show is Taut, a large canvas on which a single fighter pulls intently at a rope. His gloved hand could come directly from Caravaggio's The Cardsharps, though this time it is employed for honest work, rather than used as a mechanism of deceit.



Taut (detail) (2009) 60 x 72 in., oil on canvas

This canvas, the only departure in the show from the convention of two fighters, is also the one most directly tied to his earlier work, that which depicted manual laborers going about their tasks.

In The Clench, the pugilists grasp at the shoulders, forming an arc over the empty space behind them. The lighting in this work pushes straight through into Mannerist devices, turning them into cadaverous shades, not far removed from the "Laocoon" of El Greco.



The Clench (2009) 16 x 24 in., oil on panel

In each work of this series, Huston emphasizes anonymity through profile views and by frequently hiding the faces of the competitors completely. This effectively draws attention to the formal qualities of the work, and makes each of his modest fighters into universal emblems of material struggle.

Steve Huston: Contend is on view at Skotia, one block off the Plaza in Santa Fe through November 27th.