"The Figure3" at the IVC Art Gallery

The Figure3: Julie Kirk, Joe Gerges, and Melanie Stimmell

February 3 - March 17, 2006 

'Two Brothers' (detail) Julie Kirk 72" x 48" oil on canvas 2005

Irvine Valley College will present an exhibition of contemporary figure painting by three Orange County artists, figurative painters working within and in opposition to tradition.  The exhibition opens Feb. 4 and continues through Mar. 17.   The artists’ works represent a new resurgence in figurative and representational art, in a strong move away from the domination of postmodern abstraction of recent decades.

Julie Kirk, an IVC instructor and painter, reflects the historical tradition of classical figure painting, while exploring contemporary feminist, religious, and personal themes.  In her paintings of women and children, Kirk confronts the opposing tensions of innocence and violence, beauty and ugliness, and sacred and secular, to examine the current human condition.

 
Freelance artist and designer Joe Gerges has mastered the formal elements of centuries-old Renaissance artists in his works of contemporary socio-political commentary.  Gerges’s paintings dramatize human emotion on the melancholic side, ranging from malaise to outrage.  

"look – see" Joe Gerges, 9" x 29", acrylic on board 2006

'Clean Intentions' Melanie Stimmell, 5' x 4' Pastel on Board 2005

Street painter and “South Park” TV series illustrator Melanie Stimmell was influenced by the mid-nineteenth century primitive naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  Superficially, Stimmell’s works appear to be whimsical portraits of the by-gone era of the “Good Housewife.”  Beneath the surface, however, is a serious social-feminist commentary on the role of women in today’s society.