Artist Solien finds himself in Mickey Mouse and 'Moby Dick'

Jacob Stockinger  —  8/11/2008 3:51 pm

In some of his most colorful, hallucination-like paintings, you find famous Walt Disney cartoon characters like Goofy and Mickey Mouse.

In others, you see characters from classic American literature by Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy.

That blend of high and low, of the serious and the whimsical, is a signature of University of Wisconsin-Madison art Professor TL Solien, whose postmodern style often fuses a mix of Francis Bacon's smeary surrealism and Pablo Picasso's geometric 3-D cubism.

Solien is about to have his first major solo show, "TL Solien: Myths & Monsters," in Madison at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the Overture Center. (An opening reception and gallery talk will be held 7-10 p.m. Friday. The cost is free for MMoCA members, $5 for nonmembers. Starting Saturday, admission is free. For details: 257-0158 or www.mmoca.org.)

You could argue this show is long overdue, since Solien, who was born in North Dakota and then raised and educated in Minnesota, already has his work in prestigious collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the High Museum in Atlanta and the Tate Gallery in London. Closer to home, his work is on display at the UW's Chazen Museum of Art.

Solien recently spoke to 77 Square:

How would you describe your art?

My work is a confluence of a lot of different histories or influences. I synthesize a lot of cultural and historical information and use a dream logic or association.

I cultivate a fictional response to the real world.

Is there a common theme that unifies your art?

Fractured paintings represent fractured personalities. A lot of my work is about the self and the perception of the self. The sum total of these fragments represents how I exist.

As I'm working on a painting, I often find it necessary to change the visual components I'm using to represent that psychological architecture of identity. The process is vital; it's not just where the painting ends up.

I take liberties with metaphorical parallels between my own history, and social and cultural history. All the work I do ends up being autobiographical, but often despite the starting point.

Whether the work is grounded in a Disney cartoon or a character from great American literature, the process is the same. Whatever the character is, it is complex. We are meant to see ourselves in them. So my work is meant to be a self-critical gesture, facing into the mirror.

I fill the canvas up with all the things I contain as a human being. Some are pathetic, others are funny. They relate to sex or marriage or family or friends or academic life.

They are autobiographical, but metaphorically autobiographical more than directly or purely autobiographical.

How does the public react to your work?

The appeal of my work varies a lot. It appeals to some people because it reveals a kind of truth about how they might feel about themselves. They are reflected in the work as much as I am.

I think my work is essentially dark. There are people who gravitate to that. Other people might like it because they find it charming or funny.

I like the fact that a painting can be active and open. It's important to me.

I want people interested in my story because I don't think it's unique. It's common, and the commonality is important to me. Any single person's story is a microcosm for the whole human experience.

How does this affect the physical appearance of your paintings?

I work primarily in oils on unstretched canvas. But I've also been interested in developing a variety of surface properties so that structure of the narrative is enhanced by the surface of the paint. I mix thick and thin, solid colors and light, thin washes.

There's a perception of tension that is physical or psychological. It's very apparent when you look at the pictures.

I respond to something that presents itself to me and incorporate it positively into the painting event with a new result.

Let's call it thoughtful spontaneity. I feel good not about the image, but about following the path of the painting. Self-respect doesn't necessarily come from the end product. It relies on incidental moments and meeting incidental challenges.

What would you like viewers to take away from your work?

To be entertained and provoked or disturbed. I think there's something inherently disturbing in what I do, but I don't know if I can pin that down.

Since autobiography is important to your work, what does TL stand for?

The T is for Timothy and the L is for Lee, my mother's maiden name.

People are always curious about that. But when people ask, I often make up names.

But the reason I did it is just pure laziness. When I opened up my first checking account, it became too much work to write out my full name. My father used his initials and I emulated him.

It was also a choice to avoid gender identification.

Now everybody calls me TL except my mother.

Jacob Stockinger  —  8/11/2008 3:51 pm