The Many Sides of Joey Like

No artist in Bloomington is more exciting to follow from show to show than Joey Like.   Joey Like’s  work changes dramatically from show to show, though always following a thread.  At the same time Joey’s work evokes shamanic visions and early generation video games.  Joey Like’s work is rooted in Bauhause and De Stijl.  HIs commitment to flatness emphasizes texture and color space. 

Joey Like’s current show at the Bellevue Gallery at the Farmer House Museum offers four small triptychs.  The use of this medieval European format seems to signal, not for the first time for Joey Like, an interest in building bridges between his modernist sensibilities and ancient traditions.  Joey Like’s paintings are triptychs, but they are also masks, or depictdions of masks, or inspired by masks.    Each is accompanied by photographs, also arranged in triptych form, touch on some of LIke’s other influences in these paintings,  enigmatically titled:

Mask of the Promoted,

Mask of the Descendant,

Mask of the Journeyman,

Mask of the Travelor.

On one level these paintings read as lovely explorations of color.  Natural colors.  Clay red,  Chaulk white.  Black eyed susan yellow. These colors soothe the eyes.  Used in symbolic masks, they seem to speak of natural change,  Scrubbed and rubbed colors seem  to speak of the same, like colors made from muds and rubbed into people’s faces.

Mask of the Traveler:

This mask seems focused  and experienced.  At the same time, it seems to be open, drawing in information.  It seems to await some indication.

Mask  of the Journeyman:

This mask’s open mouth and sensitive nose and narrowed eyes seem to indicate that it is focused on absorbing information, committed to a particular path.  It seems committed, but at the same time anxious and uncertain.  The path is chosen but still unknown.

Mask of the Descendant:

This mask seems to convey that the person it adorns has withdrawn from everyday concerns, perhaps seeking some shamanic wisdom to strengthen and inform the bearer’s commitment to a chosen path.  This mask seems to suggest  that someone is far away, but will soon return.

Mask of the Promoted:

For Joey Like, yellow seems to be a color that symbolizes rebirth.  Compared with Joey’s other masks, this seems to represent a character who is unformed.  But light shines from the eyes and this seems to convey hope.

Thank you Joey Like for an exhibit of paintings that is beautiful, and sobering.