Don't Miss This Forstmann Exhibit

Eric Forstmann — Still Workings, currently at Eckert Fine Art in Kent, is the artist’s 15th solo show with the gallery. It is also testament to how Eckert has worked with the painter to build an important career. The title is also a clever play on how Forstmann looks at a subject — he paints only what he can see, not what he remembers — and works them, through angle, brush strokes, color, treatment of light, into something powerful and unexpected.
 
Take “Venus Dimato,” a lusciously red, ripe but oddly shaped tomato that in Forstmann’s oil on board is so erotic you feel a bit embarrassed to look. But look you do, such is the magnetism of the image. Or “Peartentious,” whose ripeness is palpable amid wrinkled, oddly curling leaves. There is even a painting with Forstmann’s image as he paints reflected in a glass orb (doubtless an homage to the great Northern Renaissance painter, Jan van Eyck; Forstmann is that sort of guy).
 
And don’t despair, there is one large picture of Forstmann’s signature image, shirts on hangers. When the first shirt pictures appeared years ago, he varied the images with different sizes, colors and fabrics. They were snapped up by collectors, and they still are: “Big Brothers” sold as soon as the current show opened.
 
Forstmann’s landscapes are painted outdoors, at least sort of. For cold weather — snow and ice on the ground do not deter Forstmann — he has a large van (think the size of a food truck selling tacos or hamburgers) with easel, paints, brushes and other artist necessities. So the wonderfully detailed alternating diagonal lines of bare earth and snow in “Winter’s Reach” are real, but real as Forstmann’s mind and hand record them. (This picture also sold early in the exhibition.)
 
Most interesting of all are the paintings he has made since closing his studio in Sharon and moving into a studio, actually a former ballroom, that is part of the Artist Launchpad project in Torrington. Several downtown buildings are being renovated into artist’s studios as part of the town’s redevelopment plan. (Artist Launchpad efforts are ongoing in other U.S. towns, but this is the only one in Connecticut.)
 
The first four pictures in the current show were made in Torrington. They show the remains of a useful past, when there were businesses in the downtown now long gone: fading walls, left-behind furniture, all shown in flat aspect with a heavy debt to Edward Hopper. 
 
Best and most interesting is a larger oil, “Oddfellows Ballroom,” that is a lesson in Forstmann’s mastery of light and perspective and his own realism. Certainly the detail on the ornate ceiling and the lines left by dancers on the floor are real. But the ceiling tilts up, the floor down, the line of windows across the back of the big room holds both together. The flat aspect of the ceiling is offset by the high polish of the floor. It is a picture that draws you in and makes you study it.
 
Erik Forstmann — Still Workings continues at Eckert Fine Art through Nov. 26. The gallery is at 12 Old Barn Road in Kent. Call 860-592-0353 or go to www.eckertfineart.com for information.

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