{"id":1151,"date":"2009-10-07T12:24:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T19:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/10\/matthew_offenbacher_-_the_flas\/"},"modified":"2009-10-07T12:24:26","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T19:24:26","slug":"matthew_offenbacher_-_the_flas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/10\/matthew_offenbacher_-_the_flas.html","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Offenbacher &#8211; the flash of soul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After an atom bomb strikes its target, there&#8217;s a moment before victims are blown out of their shoes or blasted onto a wall as carbon shadows. Call it a soul flash. Matthew Offenbacher paints its presence in daily life. He paints it as a cat turns its head, flowers start to die in a vase and a fish, turning in its watery gyre, sustains the universe. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"matthewoffenbachcat.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/matthewoffenbachcat.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"463\" width=\"400\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"matthewoffenbachfsh.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/matthewoffenbachfsh.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"465\" width=\"400\" \/>In acrylic and oil on treated cotton, each in the series on view at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howardhouse.net\/current\/index.html\">Howard House<\/a> is 52 by 45 inches. None has a title, which is a shame. Offenbacher&#8217;s titles are worth collecting on their own, such as, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howardhouse.net\/artists\/offenbacher\/HH03736.html\">this painting<\/a> from 2007, <i>Recognizing the diligence with which death approaches, and trying to recognize also the desirability of her arrival, and to take advantage of such recognition<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Offenbacher is mildly mystical in an early-20th century vein, modest but aspiring to consequence, hopeful that there is a key and a mystery it will unlock.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier paintings looked burrowed into existence, woven and bulging slightly along each line as if there were a roden beneath it, pushing up dirt. <\/p>\n<p>Currently, lines are fractured and color smeared, bringing to mind the early paintings of <a href=\"http:\/\/josephraffael.com\/paintings\/v\/1997\/Autumn-Fish-I.html\">Joseph Raffael<\/a>, unfortunately not online. His later work is so decorative it&#8217;s hard for anyone who wasn&#8217;t in the Bay Area in the late 60s to believe that it ever mattered at all, and yet all my life I&#8217;ve remembered a painting of a man with birds in his turban, they and he living together in perfect, light-struck calm. <\/p>\n<p>I doubt Offenbacher will take the same route. He&#8217;s too (for lack of a better word) smart. Even if given the chance to live in a fine house for becoming a shadow of himself, he wouldn&#8217;t take it. Unlike Raffael, what interests him is what art can deliver, not what are can illustrate. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"matthewoffenflowrs.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/matthewoffenflowrs.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"468\" width=\"402\" \/>Through Oct. 31.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After an atom bomb strikes its target, there&#8217;s a moment before victims are blown out of their shoes or blasted onto a wall as carbon shadows. Call it a soul flash. Matthew Offenbacher paints its presence in daily life. He paints it as a cat turns its head, flowers start to die in a vase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}