REVOLTINGLY ALLURING

Fink, Aaron. Lincoln, 2009. Oil on linen, 60" x 72.".

Aaron Fink (b. 1955) knows texture. His vaguely Op Art style subject matter is evolving from revoltingly alluring still life to revoltingly alluring portraiture. Fink's still life works are atypical in their appearance, for it is generally thought that food -- no matter how depicted -- should look edible and delicious. While we are used to seeing photographs of food more so than paintings of food, the idea of manipulating the ideal delicious-looking food to appear grotesque distorts our established visual lexicon. This distortion makes us uncomfortable with feelings of repulsion, yet we are simultaneously attracted to these paintings with their vibrating lines, strong afterimages and arresting colour palettes. Fink makes a ripe strawberry become deadened, dark and melted with textured chromatic vibration as though someone deflated and mashed it by pulling the life out of it. Such a treatment robs the fruit of its conventional identity and gives it a new one. Fink's work begs the question: why should we always depict things in their most beautiful states?

This question becomes infinitely more interesting in light of Fink's move into portraiture of, for example, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We are used to seeing these men in their most heroic and strong representations, as our currency and every U.S. History textbook confirms. To remember these figures as heroic like their portraits appear is a farce. As much as we may not want to admit it, someone like Lincoln was human and therefore not impervious to weakness, failure and disappointment. Fink exposes this truth by beating up the canvas with smears, drips, scrapes and smudges to remind us that just because the image is not perfect doesn't mean the person is worth any less or not worth seeing in an imperfect light.