Line dance

Jess Beyler and Eugene Koch at the Eastland Gallery

By Jenna Russell

New paintings by Jess Beyler and Eugene Koch run through Feb. 25 at the Eastland Gallery, open daily from noon to 7 p.m.

“KIHON (BASICS),” acrylic and mixed-media, aprox. 10” x 12,” 2000.

When Portland painter Jess Beyler started studying karate, she also started painting diagrams of the basic moves in the martial arts discipline. This proved a nearly impossible task, she writes in an artist’s statement, but she kept at it, and the results can be seen at the Eastland Gallery — now receiving the full attention of Nancy Davidson — this month.

At first glance, Beyler’s karate paintings read like the abstract equivalent of “Private — Keep Out” signs on a neighborhood clubhouse. Fiercely personal exercises, their forceful first impression is chilly, almost unfriendly. Varied in size and in palette, they’re a strange, arresting blend of circus garishness and midnight silence: explosive collisions set in fields of color that are silky and semi-transparent. The thick, twisting paint stripes that cross many canvases are sometimes clumsy and heavy-handed, too readily identifiable as tracks from a fat brush. In some of the smaller pieces, awkwardness dominates. In others, and in most of the larger works, there’s a compelling tension between brute force and emotional focus, a precarious balance of explosiveness and containment. In “Doshin” (2001), a stark, blue-white line crackles over a plum-colored plane where a rounded, indistinct form seems to be dissolving into the reddish depths. A sturdy blue line braces the bottom edge of “Kihon (Basics)” (2000) like a retaining wall; above it, milky-green paleness descends, even covering the top of the yellow frame, like fog rolling in from the direction of the ceiling.

The karate moves are meant to turn the body into a “conduit for energy,” or life spirit, Beyler writes. To illustrate physical potential, she had to include “stillness, light, and infinite space,” and the pictures became philosophical studies. Philosophy makes a stunning subject in “Infinity and Stone” (2000), where the contrast is between two unknowns, the one within reach and the one at impossible distance. The eye goes to the raised white tablet on the right, ridged and veined like marble, while on the left, the indigo night sky recedes. Its surface bears faint scratches and a faint metallic sheen. Together, the two squares explore the beauty of blankness with the simplicity of Haiku poetry. It’s an altogether quieter vision than Beyler’s large painting “Passageway,” where an airborne stream of white paint smashes into a still red square set in black space. The square is a heart of steel, unshaken by the impact, and while it holds firm, there’s anxiety generated by the painting’s unblinking gaze on the endless attempt to dislodge it. There’s no arguing with Beyler’s statement that she “thinks physically”; as for having lost her “suspicion of beauty” — well, maybe not completely. It turns out that’s not a bad thing.

It makes sense that the Eastland pairs Beyler’s work with that of Eugene Koch; the Stonington artist also uses line as his primary investigative device, and like Beyler, he pursues each investigation for himself. Both artists’ lines might look casual or incidental at first glance, but where Beyler’s are revealed as purposeful blueprints, Koch’s linear meanderings remain playful and easygoing: they are this instead of that only by chance or by accident. Their titles acknowledge the drawings’ close kinship to doodles — “Coffee Break #2” features blurred, mazelike black lines on putty-colored paper that’s a sophisticated stand-in for a damp cocktail napkin. Other ink drawings are partially painted with watercolors, often primary yellows, blues and orange-reds. The occasional colored segments act as an organizing force, hinting at faces; slash eyes and scribble ears here and there in the tangled, sprawling jumble. Elsewhere the colors are muddier and spongier and integral to the design, as in “Halloween,” where a smiling ghost is one recognizable character in the crowd of overlapping symbols.

Line consumes empty space in Koch’s works on paper like kudzu covering empty fields in Georgia. One challenge for the viewer is the way the entire surface of each piece is equally dense, so nothing swims forward into greater importance. The flat wallpaper effect creates the impression that nothing is happening.

Koch’s symbol language has something in common with primitive picture-stories inscribed on clay drinking vessels, and it also has a double life as art and decoration. It’s enjoyable rambling that makes paper more interesting than it would be blank, but the reasons for the trip are pretty well buried. Like Beyler’s paintings, these dense images resist being broken apart and digested. The dots and swirls and spirals stay locked together, in an inventive, single-minded dance. Watching from a distance, we can sway along with the music, but no space opens up for us on the crowded floor.

Jenna Russell can be reached at russelljenna@hotmail.com.