A Question of Taiste

John Wesley Question of Women
Fredericks and Freiser December 6, 2008 – February 7, 2009


I think it is impossible to trust an artist who has been working in the same style for nearly five decades. While you could argue that John Wesley has spent this time refining and cultivating his selective cropping, heavy handed formalism, and large bright spans of pop-art color, to me it resonates of a person who really doesn’t have much to say.
Question of Women unites old pieces with new and all of the above with work that has remained unshown from the artist’s collection. The conglomeration is shockingly impossible to differentiate between. Nothing is developed, nothing is really quite commented on and all suggestions are so suggestive that they never really articulate an actual idea. Since the subjects of these linear paintings are primarily women, the implication of intense sexuality and total formal idealization is obsessively unavoidable. These paintings are insulting, both because they say nothing and because they say it with all the trappings of a perverse, comic book obsessed fifteen year old boy. The only interesting thing about the show is the question of how one man managed to get away with making these insipid, unnecessary paintings for so long.