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 Eric Oates & American Girl
A look at the title work from the latest showing of portraits by Eric Oates reveals more about the artist than the American Girl herself. Unlike his earlier, close up image of Neve Campbell that captures her beauty with minimal brushstrokes, in American Girl we see what Oates does with a non-celeb model, a fresh canvas to which he can project props of his own. Choosing Milwaukee as his base of operations and soaking in all the city has to offer, he is undeniably attracted to the camp of high fashion and kitsch. Is the American Girl an interpretation of a contemporary photo or a '70s advertisement? The Coke bottle, the Corvette Stingray belt buckle and the Christopher Cross t-shirt point to the latter, but if you know the essence of Oates, you know that these accoutrements make up the here and now. Oates raises the bar with this new painting, but still manages to provide us with fresh images of the starlets and pop icons we love.
Tiffani Sorber, M.A.
Artisan Inc., Chicago
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The original intentions of Pop Art carried both positive and negative connotations. American Pop was, on one hand, euphoric eye-candy easily understood by the average viewer. On the other hand, Pop voiced growing pessimism for the shallowness that was perceived to evolve out of a booming post-war American economy that offered a prepackaged lifestyle and a new television culture.
Since British Pop artist Richard Hamilton created the catalog cover for the first Pop show This is Tomorrow in 1956, the effects of a prosperous market and the "Superstar Phenomenon" on our culture have been greatly explored. The multitudes of available products and faces have been rendered relentlessly until the representations are as familiar as the products themselves. Today, in order for the genre to be refreshing and interesting, new ground must be taken. Within a new breed of American Pop artists, Eric Oates proposes a change in direction, the investigation of male-female relationships as they exist in our time.
In the spirit of finishing what Lichtenstein started, Oates applies this model (positive/negative dichotomy to the game of searching for the perfect mate), acknowledging the power that popular culture holds over the individual American libido. With Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oates admits to the thrilling superficiality of an "ideal female" on the television screen. This superficiality is qualified by the possibility of having the "girl next door" reveal her true self, hidden behind the fantastic façade of her mask and tight pants in Uncovered.
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Catherine Burdick, M.A.
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design
2000 |
Eric Oates - Super Neo-Pop Image Maker
"Don't Worry He Doesn't Suspect a Thing" or maybe he does and she doesn't know it. The woman in Don't Worry… has a sly confidence, though we, the viewers, are not told the whole story. And herein lies the art of Eric Oates.
Oates, who has been painting since he was a child, demands the participation of the viewer while denying us knowledge of whose hand has, for example, quelled the woman in mid-sentence in I Think.
In every case, Oates doesn't deny his figures their identity, but infuses them with powerful and expressive features to suggest the opinions, passions, deceit and fear behind each of them. Even his black and white portraits of familiar faces are cropped and enlarged to intensify the relationship between them and the viewer. The artist himself possesses the same passion and humor expressed by the likes of the modern day hero, Wonder Woman, in I'll Bet We Will.
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Annemarie Sawkins, Ph.D.
Associate Curator
Haggerty Museum of Art
1999 |
Eric Oates, American Artist, creates his own vital and enigmatic art of the 90's. His dichotomy of alluring female portraits and Neo-Pop images acknowledges his diverse understanding of earlier artists and allows him to create striking new images that subtly allude to "Color Field" Abstraction, Pop Art and Super Realism. Through minimal use of paint and contours, Oates produces a collection of close-up, magnified images of famous women that convey a sultry emotional character that contrasts to the austerity of the canvas. His use of female comic book icons such as The Archies' Veronica and Superman's Lois Lane seeks not to objectify them further, but instead asserts their own strength, energy and sexual power with intellectual humor. Oates cunningly uses a double entendre as he entitled the portrait of Lois Lane, Head, a painting that portrays a bust-length image of a female in a very provocative pose with a telling sensual expression. The obvious subject matter and sense of humor only scratches the surface of the artist Oates and his abilities as he advances within the flourishing Neo-Pop scene.
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Chris Szczesny, PhD.
Dept. of Art History, UW Whitewater
1998 |
With his finger on the pulse of the Neo-Pop scene, Eric Oates, American Artist, meshes icons, images and inspiration, accented with his own unique interpretation of the world, into pictures that overwhelm and excite. From the haunting glare emanating from Shirley Manson's eyes, to the heroic Velocity Girl in flight, Oates captures the aura of those we wish we were, or at least wish we were with. The dichotomy between reality and mass media solidifies in his work through the inclusion of the human element. Admitting that these are hard time in which we live, adding the personal aligns Oates with the audience's perception of the world around us.
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Tiffani Sorber, M.A.
Judy Saslow Gallery, Chicago
1997 |
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