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Scott Stack at Monique Meloche

Art in America, Oct, 2006 by Susan Snodgrass

At first glance, Scott Stack's large, nearly monochromatic paintings appear to have much in common with Minimalist and Color Field esthetics. Built up from thin, carefully measured horizontal bands of olive, dark pine, and chartreuse oil paint, his canvases create engaging retinal sensations that invite extended viewing. However, his work takes its cue not from late modernist painting but from military technology, specifically the green glow of night-vision optics used in war.

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Upon closer inspection, one also discovers that Stack's compositions are not really abstract. Embedded within this linear geometry are images culled from the nightly news and the urban environment that either materialize or evanesce depending on the viewer's vantage point. For example, the faint scene of a plane and two small figures against an anonymous landscape casts an air of threat when rendered in night-vision green. In the bi-paneled Di (2005), the familiar underpass that was the site of Princess Diana's death--here veiled in the added layer of secrecy implied by the look of clandestine viewing technology--fades in and out of view.

These works function not unlike Warhol's "Disaster" paintings: the media construct iconic images and at the same time numb us to the realities of death and war from which they are extracted. Elsewhere, Stack turns an eye to more everyday scenes--a silhouette of Chicago's Buckingham Fountain, for instance, at once a monument to Lake Michigan and a feat of technological innovation--which, in Stack's presentation, reminds us of the failure of "progress" to improve the lot of humanity. This point is made most evident in Apartment (2006), an example of Bauhaus architecture constructed from a series of interlocking horizontal lines and small rectangular planes; here the utopian vision of modernist architecture is belied by the paranoiac post-9/11 world we now live in.

On view in the upper gallery were five small paintings (all 18 inches square) built from thick layers of black oils and silver enamels on transparent polyester, each depicting a well-known mountain summit. These works seem to borrow from Eastern landscape-painting traditions, as Stack pays homage to various natural monuments--natural icons, if you will--fading symbols of a decidedly different form of territorial conquest.

Throughout both series, Stack creates a compelling push-pull between surface and depth, image and technique. His intention is not simply to emulate the technological sources from which he draws, nor to expound on the narratives they elicit, but rather to guide the viewer's attention to the way that images--and paintings--are constructed. Meticulously rendered, these satisfying works are ultimately about seeing.

Scott Stack at Monique Meloche

Art in America, Oct, 2006 by Susan Snodgrass

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