Maybe your immediate reaction to the word labyrinth is to envision a maze from classical myth, or perhaps you'd recall the newly launched movie Pan's Labyrinth, but hold your breath, art lovers -- "Labyrinth" is now also the title of a stunning exhibit of Les Harris' artwork from 1966 to 1976, now showing at the Amaranthine Museum of Baltimore.
Les Harris, one of the world's foremost visionary artists, features an overwhelming experience of art, museum and spirituality. The museum space is used to exemplify the Greek heroic tradition of the synthesis of art as craft and art as man's desire to order the chaos of nature. More than merely providing space for Harris' art work, its unique narrative and inspiration combined with elements of design and decoration boisterously intertwines with Harris' paintings.
"Labyrinth" presents its viewers a spectacular journey through the creative process of human civilization. A total of 16 sections of the Labyrinth take you from prehistory into post-future. You will encounter those familiar terms and genres of Gothic, Renaissance, Neoclassical, and Romantic; these names speak for their own styles and subject matters with solid historical contents. The entire gallery aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites, both backwards and forwards in time, as well as to portray a wider vision of spiritual and natural world. Harris' postmodern conception has transcended past into present pictorially with altered reality and vice versa.
The more than 200 works of art in a variety of media offset a multi-dimensional artistic experience; it even flows with distinctive music from one era to another. The manifestations of character and identity are meticulously displayed. For visitors, Les Harris has made sure to entertain with his full effort both visually and aurally. And with that, you can flow with your imagination and blend in to this carnival of dream and art that surrounds you.
At the entrance, "An Event Horizon" leads you into a course of metal bars, draped tinsel, frantic lightning, and awkwardly displayed frames that might somehow remind you of the restaurant down on 29th St., Papermoon Diner. Certainly the exotic display rudimentary carves out the initial impression of this visionary art. Wild, passionate, absorbing, yet well polished, with a recreation of mixed tableaus. Following the path of Labyrinth, you will walk from "Atlantis" all the way to the "Black Hole."
The paintings are unforgettable; they bear not only rich hues, bold lines and energetic brush-strokes, but depict the underlying conflict of the spiritual and natural world. Les Harris has successfully brought the juxtaposition of structure and detail together to present a seemingly unsentimental, distanced theme.
While in the midst of metal bars, tinker toy sculptures, stripped phone wires of different colors and display mannequins, the art created by Les Harris is meant to weave the past with the future, presenting a timeless validity to embody the world of contemporary. Sections such as "The Age of Decadence" and "Black Hole" confuse you as to the purpose and theme of the exhibit, but don't panic. It sure will award you intellectual satisfaction and stimulation long after you finish your museum tour.
Whether your verdict is astonishing! or worth paying another visit! or even this visionary art is crap!, you've got to explore yourself: walk out your room, grab a friend, and taste for yourself this thrilling experience. If you are sick of the BMA, the D-level "art gallery", Amaranthine Museum might be a good place to go.
The Labyrinth at the Amaranthine Museum, 3500 Clipper Rd., Baltimore. (410) 366-0574.
