John Himmelfarb at Koehnline Museum

 A review of John Himmelfarb "How things Stack up" at the Koehnline Museum

KB3 - 2014

Girls like dolls. Boys like toy trucks: they carry stuff - they have wheels - they race downhill - dad may  own the real thing.  And John Himmelfarb (b. 1946) still can’t get enough of them.  As the gallery sitter informed me, every single piece in this career spanning exhibition has a truck (though you may have to look very very hard to find it)

Above is a vintage real truck that he’s stuffed with junk - not unlike the metal salvagers who patrol the alleys of Chicago.  I’ve always loved  rusting farm machinery whenever found,  but even better, this pile of junk has  been as tastefully arranged as a bouquet of flowers.

The Ink Truck is Here, 2015

While here is a really dynamic, and scary,  wood block print. Himmelfarb may be locked onto a single subject matter - but can use a variety of materials and techniques to great advantage. Reminds me of the 4x8 plywood sheet prints of fellow Midwesterner, Tom Huck.

This bronze "Ur Truck" (2019) seems to have driven in from another dimension.

Playful and mysterious, it has the blue-green patina of an ancient relic. Not surprising that the artist once worked in the studio of Ruth Duckworth.

Drama, 2020

Himmelfarb plays with styles as well as materials.

This piece could have hung in a Hairy Who?  exhibit of the sixties. 

High-chroma silliness done really well.

Girder, 2012

And he makes plywood constructions that suggest buildings or factory machinery.

All of the above is a boy’s  delight in building and beholding the great and incomprehensible world of men. Like the Chicago Imagists, he doesn’t want to grow up.  And why should he ?  Everything he touches becomes delightful - at least for a moment.

PV84, 2015

Could be trucks, could be wine bottles, 

could be text written in a lost alphabet.

Or could just be an expressive abstract painting.

It’s not the only such piece in this show.

There’s a feeling of passionate emergence here,

a thought trying to clarify itself. A brain at work.

Or maybe just the corroding undercarriage of a a semi ?

 

This is the one piece in the show that feels like it's seeking rather than entertaining.

I’m glad he does both- but also wish he made things that  transcend the busy, mundane  life of the street or nursery.

Himmelfarb's art has a warm, cheerful, positive glow.  The workmanship broadcasts good will. 

Yet it also echoes the great suburban sprawl of our civilization as it smothers the planet with highways, strip malls, industrial parks, and housing developments.  Everything solidly built, nothing beautiful.  No refuge here for contemplation.  No ideal beyond the accumulation of more stuff - stacked high in the bed of a cute old pick-up.