As they have done before, Donald Cook and Robert Llewellyn are showing their work together again at Gomez. They complement one another, as they have done before, but in a different way this time around.
Both artists used to concentrate on images of built structures -- Cook on the house form and Llewellyn on the boat form. Their works played off one another visually and in terms of content as well, for they contained subtexts about the sea of life. Llewellyn's message had to do with making a sound structure with which to embark on that uncharted sea; Cook's referred to the difference between the ideal life we aspire to lead and the imperfect one we live.
Llewellyn's visual vocabulary has expanded considerably. He still includes boats, but now they appear in an enlarged context of landscape, piers and open constructions that have no apparent utility but exist, perhaps, as symbols of human aspiration. As Llewellyn's imagery and his use of media expand, however, they appear to move farther from message and closer to purely visual statement. It is enough to respond to these works for their use of watercolor, oil stick, acrylic, etc.; for their crisp articulation of elements, for their satisfying compositions and attention to detail.
Cook, on the other hand, has abandoned the house motif and turned to other imagery. Aside from four small sculptures, which hope for more significance than they achieve, his work here divides into two groups of watercolors: small studies that possess considerable elegance of touch and subtlety of expression, and a group of figural compositions pregnant with meaning.
In "The Peril of Foolish Company," a trio of figures wearing dunce caps dances on the edge of a crevice into which others have fallen. In "The Burden of Memory" a naked figure is about to be clothed with a heavy cloak, suggesting that if memory is a burden it is perhaps also a protection.
If Llewellyn edges away from message and Cook embraces it even more explicitly than before, these artists are still united by their mastery of means and facility of execution, which is a pleasure to see.
Also on view is a group of small photographic works by Robert Flynt, in which he explores the erotic potential of art in comparison with that of living beings. By combining in his photographs classical sculptures and clothed and unclothed male and occasionally female figures, Flynt both endows art with eroticism and leeches real people of it. He plays the same game of transference with the nude and the clothed. These small works are not as effective as his larger scale ones, however, for Flynt is at his most telling when the figures in his work approach life size.
COOK AND LLEWELLYN
What: Robert Llewellyn; Donald Cook; Robert Flynt
Where: Gomez Gallery, 836 Leadenhall St.
When: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, through Dec. 31
Call: (410) 752-2080